Hi Richard, >Just got my complimentary copy of a CD produced here in Norway. Ketil >Bjørnestad and Ole Paus decided to do a CD on a old Pleyel forte grand from >1860. Ah ha. The subject line says 1869. Which is it? There's quite a difference between a late 1850s and an early 1870s French piano. >This piano was put back into playing condition about 15 years ago. To the >dismay of some and pleasure of others this included a complete rescaling >of the >instrument and inclusion of some modern action parts. Too bad. But maybe the answer on the date is irrelevant in that case. >The high treble is nearly impossible to tune... no matter what you do it >sounds bad.. >but the rest of the piano is pleasing enough... to hard to get and keep >abolutely clean. The treble is hard to tune, but shouldn't be impossible. Something not right in the restoration maybe? > >From about A4 down it is actually quite nice and the bass is just wonderfull >really. This is one of the joys of straight-strung pianos. >This despite the fact that the rescaling included hex core copper wound >bass strings replacing the entire bass. The origional strings I believe were >plain iron, then lower a type of plain bronze ?? and the lowest strings were >iron wound...tho my information is sketchy on this. I expect the original stringing material was not much different in principle from a modern piano....should be plain steel, then wound. No brass, and never bronze (no one ever strung pianos in bronze till the nuts who used phosphor bronze out of ignorance.) Iron wound is common and the windings go right over the pins. >Anyways.. I thought I would let you all hear a one minute cut from the CD. Thanks. Sounds nice despite the mucking around you mentioned. Can you post a bit more so we can hear the problem you described with the treble? Stephen Stephen Birkett Fortepianos Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos 464 Winchester Drive Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2T 1K5 tel: 519-885-2228 mailto: sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca
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