Yes, well, with a lot of those Kimball's the whole piano was a design error. And, sadly, the Kimball was not the only--or the worst--culprit. It was just the best known. 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 -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Nossaman Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 5:42 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Not one of Bechstein's design triumphs..... On 3/29/2012 3:15 AM, David Boyce wrote: > In general, then, do you design folks think its OK to have strings > resting against the coils on neighbouring strings? In general, I'd say no, but like any "universal" rule, in practice or by circumstance, it's a matter of degree. What you pictured is a non-issue functionally. The strings may touch neighboring coils, but they aren't binding in any way that will affect tuning, which makes it largely cosmetic. That's why no one jumped on it immediately, because it's a "so what?" We have lots of Kimball verticals here, and in lesser numbers Baldwins, with strings snaking back and forth around neighboring coils at drastic deviations, jamming together so that you literally can't tune the low tenor unisons because moving the next string moves the just tuned one. I thought I had a photo of one of these travesties, but I don't find it, which is a shame. You ought to get to see a good example of real design and production stupidity, which was perpetuated year after year after year, through tens of thousands of pianos, and never corrected. The Baldwins, in this case, actually had room for the strings to be placed correctly, so were more likely a working design originally, but pin rows were shifted in translating the design to production that caused the interference. At least that's how it looked to me. The Kimballs, however, could never have worked under any circumstances. I did find one characteristic example of the fine attention to detail and craftsmanship characteristic of Kimball, but unfortunately not the right one. Ron N
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