Stringing Braid and the perception of doing it right

[David M. Porritt]

I'm a believer in string braid.  Some of those short back scale
lengths produce some loud sounds.  I had a piano here that rang loud
and long making it sound like the damper of B5 was not working at
all.  It was the back scale length of a note in the low tenor.  I
guess if you don't have any of those segments ringing you're ok, but
I generally don't like odd strings generating non-harmonic noise.

dave

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

On 5/28/2003 at 7:55 AM Phil Bondi wrote:

>Good Morning to all.
>
>I recently completed my 3rd re-string of my brief career..2 Baldwin
Grands
>and a newer Wurlitzer Grand that had pre-maturely rusted.
>
>This last re-string has further convinced me of my conviction of the
>following:
>
>Stringing Braid is not necessarily necessary.
>
>There was alot of stringing braid that came off of this
>Baldwin(#17907..circa 1911)..the bass bridge wire was braided, and
the low
>tenor to about A4 was braided. That's over 1/2 of the instrument
being
>braided.
>
>Why?
>
>Is there some musical significance to stringing braid? If there is,
I'm not
>hearing it.
>
>I am of the belief that a wire on a piano should be allowed to speak
freely
>without any restrictions. The piano is the only stringed instrument
that I
>can think of that uses a dampening agent(?) on its waste area for
the
>purpose of...........
>
>That's my question: What is the purpose of stringing braid? If its
purpose
>is to dampen overtones, aren't the overtones necessary in the
production of
>sound? If the purpose of stringing braid is to 'pretty up' the
piano, then
>I'm guilty of not wanting to pretty it up in that fashion, because
I'm not
>hearing anything that requires it to be 'prettier'.
>
>I'm looking forward to the responses.
>
>-Phil Bondi (Fl.)
>phil@philbondi.com
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives


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