[pianotech] Broadwood Barless Grand

[Laura Olsen]

I have one I take care of.  Rebuilt by Jeff Cappelli.  It's gorgeous. The marquetry on case is fabulous, like miniature parquet .  It's a stunning piece, but I understand it wasn't easy to rebuild.  Jeff could speak to that, if he's on the list.  The case was refinished and the plate re-guilded and the "swoop" of that plate is beautiful.  The serial number is 40261.  The owner put a Piano Disc system on it and I've resisted tuning to A440.  I've tuned it to A435.  I've had trouble dating it but early 1890's seems right.  What do you think?  Would you pull it up to A440?

Laura Olsen
Barrington, IL

On Jul 6, 2011, at 11:37 PM, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:

> Thanks for posting the pictures. I’ve not  had a lot of experience with these pianos but…
>  
> I’ve long been curious about the motivation behind the concept. The most often heard explanation is that by leaving the frame (or plate) struts out the scale can be continuous. But, of course, they are not continuous. At least none of the barless grands I’ve examined have had continuous bridges. Look at the picture that shows most of the strings and you can see a jog toward middle of the tenor bridge—turns out they needed an action bracket there so it was still necessary to put in a gap. Might has well have a strut if you’re going to have a gap of about the same width anyway. And a strut running just to the right of the top bass strings doesn’t add any width either. You need a gap there for dampers anyway if you’re going to cross-string the thing. So, again, you might as well have the strut.
>  
> Regardless, they sure look cool.
>  
> ddf
>  
> Delwin D Fandrich
> Piano Design & Fabrication
> 6939 Foothill Court SW, Olympia, Washington 98512 USA
> Phone  360.515.0119 — Cell  360.388.6525
> del at fandrichpiano.com — ddfandrich at gmail.com
>  
> From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Boyce
> Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 1:54 PM
> To: pianotech at ptg.org
> Subject: [pianotech] Broadwood Barless Grand
>  
> I promised some more pics of the Broadwood Barless Grand I was asked to look at a few weeks ago.  Here they are. I would have liked to take the lid off, but the hinges did not have extract-able pins and it was late. I suspect the hinges were of the type where the pin is fixed in one half and slides into the other half, but although I tried to nudge the lid around, nothing would budge,and it was to late in the evening to do more.
> 
> Am sending in a couple of posts so as not to exceed file size.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> David.

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