Phillip Ford wrote:
"This topic is like most piano topics (such, as we have recently seen, wound trichords) - you can find many people willing to give you, in an authoritative voice, a 'definitive' answer. It's hard to find many that can offer a convincing reason to go with it, and fewer still who can offer any data, evidence, or experience to back up that reason."
But, Phil, in the case of wound trichords, I would have to disagree somewhat. I asked "why" and I got several reasoned responses, and the most specific of those came from those who seemed to speak from some considerable experience:
Ron Overs, while not direclty addressing the merits of using wound trichords above the break as a remedial measure for a scale problem, more or less said that there are much better ways to solve those scale problems in the original manufacture of the piano, namely by making the bass-tenor break higher. "Trichords and Bichords at the lower end of the long bridge are a work around for breaking too low." So there's one reason there very existence annoys some people.
Alan Forsyth seemed to be speaking from evidence and experience when he said that any additional volume from three strings vs. two is negligible compared to the insuperable obstacles to nicely tuning three invariably mismatched wound strings: "But with wound trichords, the string winders hardly ever get them exactly matched and they just don't tune nicely. There has been many a time I have been sorely tempted to remove the centre wound string. I find that tuning bass bichords is bad enough, also because of mismatching, but trichords are really unnecessary. Adding the third string makes hardly any difference in the volume at all."
Joe Goss also seemed to be speaking from experience when he seconded Alan's comments: "the correct two will do the job without introducing all the problems involved in trying to match uo three mismatched lengths of windings. It is hard enough to get two exactly the same yet three. I have yet to tune a piano with tri's that did not make the theory of three suspect."
Alan also implicitly addressed the fact that replacing plain strings with wound ones at the bottom of an existing long bridge would probably result in excessive tension: "Probably a good idea to change to wound bichords in the low tenor IF you rescale for a higher tension." [emphasis added] as did Ron: "if Chickering were given the option of having his time over . . . he would probably have opted to use . . . a speaking length of between 12% to 14% shorter than the last plain wire speaking length." (I would like to know if that has to do more with concerns with actually over-stressing the core wire, or with achieving a better inharmonicity, tone, and/or volume match.)
But I understand how you got the impression that this was like the torque spec questions. It just took (just a little) while before the experience and logic behind the 'conventional wisdom' ('Wound Trichords Are An Abomination!') surfaced, and indeed Conrad Hoffsommer got the impression initially that you and I did: "Trent didn't seem to be getting anything but don't-do-its, so I thought I'd elicit some "whys"."
More experienced-based answers to 'why' came from Dave Stahl: "Even my M and H AA makes me struggle in the tenor. Try a Lester spinet that has wound trichords...ye gads!"
and Ron Nossaman's experience in rebuilding and rescaling confirmed most of the reasoning given by others, and he added some insight into volume-matching issues with wound trichords and explained why bichords aren't just fewer to tune together, but are more likely to match than any two in a trichord:
"To blend tensions and volume into wrapped bichords or plain trichords, especially on the same bridge, wrapped trichords have to be very light, with very fine and delicate wrap. They're difficult for string winders to make and very difficult to match in a unison, so they don't tune well or blend well aurally within the scale. Bichords allow larger wrap, are easier to make, more likely to match, and blend better aurally. The transition from plain wire to wrapped should always be accompanied by a reduction in speaking lengths, either by positioning the bass/tenor break high enough in the scale, or with a transition bridge at the low tenor." "So far, I haven't seen a scale including wrapped trichords that couldn't be made at least as "good", typically much better, with bichords, without the tuning and voicing problems."
And now I see, Ron has just made another post with some really detailed suggestions for my own pianos low-tenor scaling issues. A wealth of helpful responses -- and, Phil, in this case, I think when you collate all the answers together, there's a lot of consistency of experience and reasoning. So I'll wrap it up with thanks to everyone. I definitely think I got some educational answers to my question!
Best regards,
Trent Lesher
Hi Joe,
It's still a mystery to me, though. Why, on the long bridge, are three an abomination and not two? Are three too loud for the rest of the scale, or too thick for the hammers to hit all three properly, or is there too much tension making the structure unstable or something? Or is it related to all the weird and inconsistent extra sounds that wound strings make, so that tuning 3 of them together is just about impossible or something?
I notice that on old (1900-1930 era) Mason & Hamlin uprights and others, when they have wound strings above the bass bridge, they often have them on their own separate, third, little bridge. (I assumed it was because once you went to a wound string, you had to make it shorter than the adjacent plain strings or the core wire would be overstressed by the tension.) I don't have any particular thought about that, it just occurred to me that fact might fit in here somewhere.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Trent
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe And Penny Goss [mailto:imatunr@srvinet.com]
Sent: Fri 11/19/2004 10:30 PM
To: Pianotech
Cc:
Subject: Re: Wound Trichords
Hi Trent, Bi's yes Tri's no.
Joe Goss RPT
Mother Goose Tools
imatunr@srvinet.com
www.mothergoosetools.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lesher, Trent J." <tlesher@sachnoff.com>
To: "Alan Forsyth" <alanforsyth@fortune4.fsnet.co.uk>; "Pianotech"
<pianotech@ptg.org>; <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 9:19 PM
Subject: RE: Wound Trichords
> Terry, Alan, List:
>
> Okay, since nobody's asked yet, I will. Why are they an abomination? I
had actually been thinking one way to improve the tone of the last couple
notes at the low end of the long bridge on my M&H 50 -- C#3, the lowest
before the break, is 38-3/4" long -- would be to replace the plain wires
with wound ones. Now it seems maybe I am full of misconceptions and this is
a bad idea -- but why?
>
> Thanks for any illumination,
>
> Best regards,
>
> Trent Lesher
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Forsyth [mailto:alanforsyth@fortune4.fsnet.co.uk]
> Sent: Fri 11/19/2004 7:14 PM
> To: Pianotech
> Cc:
> Subject: Wound Trichords
>
>
> Yes, they are an abomination!!!!
>
> AF
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Farrell <mailto:mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
> To: Pianotech <mailto:pianotech@ptg.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 11:24 PM
> Subject: Re: Steinway Damper sytem upgrade
>
>
> Help stamp out would tricords!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Terry Farrell
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