Speaking of Steinway grand sizes

[John Delacour]

At 07:25 -0600 6/2/08, Mike Spalding wrote:

>...Further, their wire diameter selections in the low bass can be 
>improved upon.  If you still want scale data from the original 
>strings, I can send it to you, but you'll get better sound by 
>providing precise length measurements to a stringmaker and having 
>him/her calculate diameters.

Quite so!  I have made many sets of strings for the miniature and not 
once copied the original scale, which takes the tension far too high 
most of the way through the bichords -- for example note 26 has a 
0.55 cover on a 15.5 core, giving 84% of UTS, where we set 70% as the 
limit.  I have all the details for the original factory scale and it 
is not impressive.  In fact very few of Steinway's bass scales are 
acceptable.

One thing I would advise against for the Miniature is the use of any 
double-covered strings to replace the low single-covered strings.  I 
have done various experiments expecting to improve the quality of the 
tone in these strings, but the structure of the piano seems to 
respond best to single-covered strings similar to the original scale, 
which are able to shake the piano in a rather unusual way.

For what it's worth, here is the scale we use:



JD
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