Wapin bridge

[David M. Porritt]

Phillip:

The piano I was referring to was a fine sounding piano with no
problems.  It had been nicely rebuilt about 8 years earlier by Tim
Coates and sold to his brother.  At the time we did the Wapinization,
nothing else was done by way of belly work.  The piano was not
restrung.  The tension was taken down section at a time, strings
moved out of the way and the bridge modified alla Wapin with no
notching or other work done.  I honestly don't remember about the
hammer filing.  When I left the house mid-afternoon of the second day
Tim was still tuning (as you can imagine it takes a few times through
to get it stable).  I don't know if he did any hammer filing.
Perhaps he can chime in on this.

Though the piano was not tuning stable when I left, it sounded good.
I came back a few weeks later to tune again as it was still settling
down.  The piano is in Plano, TX and Tim is from the Dakota Territory
(is that a state yet?) so he didn't come back to retune.  At that
time it sounded very nice.

dave

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/29/2002 at 3:11 AM Phillip L Ford wrote:

>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


_____________________________
David M. Porritt
dporritt@mail.smu.edu
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_____________________________