Interesting piano, Terry. Some years ago I completely redesigned one of these pianos for Steve Ganz, a rebuilder in Portland, Oregon. It got everything: cutoff bar, fish, soundboard & rib design, floating bass, new bass scale, etc. The only thing it did not get was a new tenor/treble scale. As you say, no hook. This is the ONLY scale I've ever measured that I did not change in any way. (I did clean up the bass scale, but didn't touch the plain wire scale at all.) When the piano was finished I gave an all-day seminar on the piano to the Oregon technicians. The seminar was held at a large piano store in Portland so we were surrounded by much larger new pianos. Still, the little Monarch more than held its own. It was a beautiful sounding piano regardless of its size. Gave lie to the argument that small pianos can't be musical. Del _____ From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Farrell Sent: October 31, 2006 1:02 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Baldwin Monarch Micro-Grand Today I tuned a Baldwin Monarch Micro-Grand. Clearly an economy grade piano. I couldn't find a serial number, but the piano has been refinished and restrung (plus keytops, painted-black ebony sharps (yuk!) and hammers) and some years ago - so I presume the piano is from sometime between the 1920s and 1950s (more likely closer to the former). My question concerns the string scale. It has a large bass section (F3 is the highest bass note - so what, 33 notes?) and the long bridge has zero hockey stick. Apparently someone a long time ago tried to design a string scale for a small piano that approached some sort of logarithmic progression, omitted the low tension shortened low tenor notes, and didn't worry about putting a long bass bridge on the piano. So why did this approach nearly vanish way back then? Why DID folks get going with the hockey-stick long bridge ends? Clearly, designers of small pianos way back then had two paths to follow. Why did most go for the hockey-stick? Terry Farrell Farrell Piano www.farrellpiano.com terry at farrellpiano.com BTW - Don't you just love sustain-shortened killer octave areas? I was doing some measurements with my Verituner and found that on some notes I could have a unison up to about 8 cents off and you would barely hear the start of a beat! Talk about some mighty easy/fast tuning! Add the false beats into the mix and those dead scale areas can actually be an asset for some pianos! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20061031/d336ea8e/attachment.html
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