[CAUT] Bridge Materials and Design

[Don Mannino]

I like that idea, 6 or 7 pianos to choose from in every home.  Kawai sometimes builds some really nice forte-pianos and harpsichords to add to every musician's choices. :-)

I have some experience hearing the heavy duty sales pitch for the "StoneTone" bridge system.  Every manufacturer has been well informed, I think, of the wonderful, unique, amazing, magical properties of this incredible new idea. :-)  Their web site seems to be under revision at the moment, but their videos and sound samples are revealing in spite of the low quality recordings.  There is a lot of sustain, for sure.

http://stonetonepiano.com/index.html

Bridge surface hardness has a definite impact on the tone, as does the mass of course.  How firmly the string is "clamped" to the bridge makes a difference as well.  So using very hard woods in the treble has been common to improve sustain and clarity of the high partials.  Using metal to terminate the strings really does change the tone - I learned this working on some of the older pianos with metal bridge terminations, especially a couple of the old Sohmers with agraffes on the bridge.

Changing the string termination material at either end within the scope of the scale shows the differences.  Our normal agraffes changing to a capo bar makes a difference in tone, which is partially smoothed over by the change in the front scale area from high angle with felt in the agraffes, and open strings on the capo.  The Sohmers stopped the agraffes in the treble (because the bridge became too crowded there), which was kind of backwards tonally - there was a clear drop in sustain and added muting of high partials above the break.  I recapped one of these with boxwood in the treble, and that helped reduce the break a lot.

I also one time tried putting pins under strings way back when.  The sound was quite interesting, and I removed them right away.

I'm sure there is a lot more testing of new ideas on bridges that can be done, but as with most things in pianos it's hard to find something that hasn't been done before.  I think the granite bridge is a new one, though.  I'd enjoy hearing it on a really nice piano, but wouldn't want to do it to any piano that was really nice.  If you get my meaning.

Don Mannino

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ed Sutton
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 2:54 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Stuart & Son on NPR

That's why I wrote "As I recall." I was uncertain of the exact details anymore. Also, as I recall, they said the partial retrofit was done that way because the structure of the Baldwin didn't allow the agraffes to fit all the way across the bridge. But that may have been my misunderstanding or their miscommunication. They did seem to be saying that the agraffes would eventually be offered for retrofit installation.

On a more general note, I would comment that "longer sustain" is not necessarily an unlimited good thing for piano tone. Most piano music was written with the characteristics of piano sound in mind, and does not sound good on a Hammond organ. Malcolm Bilson argues, rather well, that Mozart cannot be played as originally intended on a modern piano, which is not to say he says you should not try, if that's the piano you have.

Like Malcolm, everyone should have 6 or 7 pianos to choose from.

Ed Sutton