Wapin bridge

[Phillip L Ford]

Dave,

I was wondering if everything else was exactly the same.  When trying to determine
if changes actually are improvements part of the problem is isolating the change
you're interested in from all the other changes.  For instance, you rebuild a piano
and install the new super duper platinum wire.  The piano sounds better.  Is it because
of the wire or the 20 other things you changed at the same time?  If you don't
change anything but the wire, then if it sounds better how do you know it wouldn't
have sounded just as good (or better) if you had used the gold wire instead of the
platinum?  The same applies to this (or other) wapinizations.  Did you take a
properly functioning bridge termination of a conventional type and replace it
with a wapin, or did you replace a bridge with indented caps and indented and/or
loose bridge pins?  Did you surface the bridge at all?  Is the bearing exactly the
same as it was before? Are the strings the same
as the ones that were there before?  Was the capo resurfaced (since I assume the
piano was restrung)?  Were the hammers surfaced, since the grooves might not
line up exactly with the new string locations?  Etc., etc.
Questions like these have so far kept me from becoming a wapin believer.  I've
seen and heard some wapin pianos that sounded good.  However, in my opinion
they didn't sound any better than those pianos would have sounded if they had
been properly rebuilt with conventional bridge terminations.  Frankly I'm sceptical
about the merits of this system.  Until I can hear some examples in which the
bridge terminations can be directly compared with other variables held constant
I probably will remain so.

Phil F

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 11:52:14 -0600
From: "David M. Porritt" <dm.porritt@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Wapin bridge

Phillip:

In this case the bridge was not recapped.  Frankly - I'm restricted
by the license agreement - from saying much more about the procedure.
 

dave

On 1/28/2002 at 5:17 PM Phillip L Ford wrote:

>Dave,
>I'm not familiar with the mechanics of a Wapin installation.  Is the
bridge
>recapped and/or bearing (re)set?
>
>Phil F