I know about the old Schumanns, They have a decal that says "Built like a Violin" which I never could quite understand. The ribs structure is a radial design where they all originate at one end of the board near each other and then radiate away from each other. The idea was to space ribs in an infinite variety ways so that every harmonic would be allowed to vibrate. The tone seemed typical of lower end american grands from that era, and the piano was lightly built and boasted about having a "low tension scale". There were only three sections and no agraffs. Such pianos can be made to play quite well and often can have responsive actions and functional but they are not class one pianos. -Mike Jorgensen RPT
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