Hi Kevin and List, I just recently 'joined' this list, and besides being generally interested in these things as a musician, I am now, after a varied career (?) since joining the workforce more than two decades ago, a beginning tuning student who would like to learn more about pianos and possible ways to improve ones out there. (I am also looking into PTG membership, awaiting my packet of information.) What you say here relates to a question I've been wondering about. If part of the problem with notes near the bottom of the long bridge on many smaller pianos is low percentage of breaking strain, what are some possible ways of improving that? Besides a general interest, I have a more immediate one because I have a 30 year-old Mason & Hamlin Model 50 upright that I've been dreaming up experiments to do on -- both as part of my education, and hopefully to make it more rewarding to play. (Of even more immediate applicability, I've been playing around for a couple of months with different temperaments and string materials and tuning methods on an autoharp I picked up, which despite the apparent reputation of that instrument, I find endlessly engaging. I rarely play it in the 'normal way', though.) I know that one approach is to put some wound strings above the break, but I haven't gotten the impression that that is generally regarded as a very good solution. Based on fooling around with replacements for the standard first several plain strings on this autoharp (which as it comes has some "solicitation" percentages in the low 30's) and thinking about a string for a monochord that somebody posted about recently, I started to wonder about using softer steel or iron wires, such as the ones offered for the restoration of pianos that originally did not use modern steel music wire. Since then, I have heard of at least one "historic wire" manufacturer recommending exactly that -- mixing modern and historic wire types in a modern piano to achieve better tone in the lowest plain strings and a better break. But I've never heard comments from anyone who has tried that. It doesn't seem like it would be that expensive to do, so it seems like if it was a good idea then companies like Yamaha would already be doing it in pianos like this GA-1E. Then the percentage of breaking strain, or solicitation, would be better just above the break, and presumably the tone & inharmonicity would improve (as well as the tunability?). Maybe some manufacturers do so already, or maybe it's still considered too wierd for conservative designers, or maybe a few do but consider it part of their secret formula. The data I've seen on these alternative wires shows them coming in tensile strengths of about 45% to 80% of modern wire, with (I think) Young's Modulus's more or less corresponding to that. I think the densities are generally about the same as modern wire, but I'm not sure. I'm hoping you or somebody on the list might have some advice or thoughts whether to try this on my Model 50. What might be the drawbacks? A new break problem between the modern and alternative wires? Should one use a progression of types, starting with someting like a PureSound wire with 80% tensile strength of modern wire going all the way to something with 50% tensile strength for the lowest note on the long bridge? One thing that's odd about the Model 50 I have is that the lowest tricord on the long bridge, a C#3, sounds much worse than the next tricord, D3, right above it. In general the whole area approaching the lower end of the long bridge just doesn't sound great -- maybe from F# or so on dow -- but the C# sounds truly awful. Sort of a thunky, closed, loud, strangled, body-blow sound. Maybe not worse than some cheap pianos normally sound, but pretty bad. So I don't know what's going on there, maybe part of it is just the position it has at the end of the bridge, or where that is on the sounboard or something. (Nothing I've done so far makes that C#3 sound better, whereas I got the D3 above the break and the C3 below to match somewhat better by wedging some blocks by trial and error behind the bridges -- also the whole range approaching the top of the bass bridge now has a nice clear tenor sound and the whole balance of the piano is better with the blocks. With the blocks just right, it's very nice because the tone continuously deepens as you play downward, instead of being so thick in the middle.) The speaking length at C#3 is about 37.8" long, and the lengths decrease, very roughly speaking, by about 15/16" per half step up to F#. I haven't calculated it out, but it doesn't seem like there'd be any drastic difference based on percentage of breaking strain alone between C# and the rest of the notes. Despite all the questions raised by that last paragraph, I would like to start formulating some plans for improving the scale of this piano. Does it make sense to start with scaling, then deal with other problems afterwards? Best regards, Trent Lesher I-----Original Message----- From: Kevin E. Ramsey [mailto:kevin.e.ramsey@cox.net] Sent: Wed 2/4/2004 7:30 AM To: Pianotech Cc: Subject: Re: ga-1 Yes, the GA-1E is Yamaha's new little price-point piano. This is the one that has plain wire going all the way down to B2, which in a piano that size gives you some real problems tuning. B2 and the next few notes sound like rubber bands, and it's frankly hard to find a good place to put those notes. For that reason I usually recommend a Kawai grand if they're looking for a piano that small. I'm surprised Yamaha designed and built this piano, it's not like them. Kevin. ----- Original Message ----- From: Farrell <mailto:mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com> To: Pianotech <mailto:pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 2:59 AM Subject: Re: ga-1 I've heard of the GH-1 as the low-end heapy-cheapy Yamaha, but am not familiar with the GA-1. Is the GA-1 the new and improved low-end heapy-cheapy Yamaha, or did they simply find a way to make their low-end heapy-cheapy Yamaha even more cheaply? Is it a little five-footer? Terry Farrell EVEN MORE IMPORTANT NOTICE: Never mind the message below. 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