Why do some pianos have the bass bridge connected to the longbridge?

[Delwin D Fandrich]

| -----Original Message-----
| From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org 
| [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of Calin Tantareanu
| Sent: April 07, 2005 10:48 AM
| To: Pianotech
| Subject: Re: Why do some pianos have the bass bridge 
| connected to the longbridge?


| 
| It's weird though that some makers seem to want to have a lot of room
| between the end of the long bridge and the rim. Why else 
| would they use the wider than 90 degrees angle of the spine to the belly rail?
I 
| think all Steinway grands have this, for instance.
| So on one hand they want the bridge to get stiffer, on the other they
| deliberately place it in a more flexible soundboard location.

Tradition. And empirical design. 

There is no need for the bass spine, or straight side, to go off at an angle.
The same effect can much more easily be achieved by slightly altering the string
angles. Within reasonable limits the bass bridge can be placed anywhere the
designer wants it to be. 

Keep in mind these pianos were designed close to a century and a half back. A
lot of thought has gone into the problem since then. It's just that little of it
has shown up in the produced product.


| 
| Could this "killing" of the bass could be deliberate? Perhaps 
| some piano designer thought that a good bass sound should have more pronounced
| harmonics but less or no fundamental?

There is no way to tell what the original thought processes were behind some of
these features. We can only speculate. There are other ways of coping with the
bridge end effect, however. In most cases simply extending the end of the tenor
bridge on out a ways will suffice. 


| 
| Another interesting thing is that this connection between the 
| 2 bridges is suspended, it doesn't touch the soundboard.

That is right. The "ring" part of the ring bridge doesn't have to be attached to
the soundboard to do its job. In fact, attaching it to the soundboard would
probably be detrimental to both the low tenor and low bass. It would make things
quite a bit stiffer.

Del