Double Trouble (was re: What to Patent)

[Clark]

Susan,

My associate recently looked at a Winter Musette console with a second
soundboard! I sold an 1870's Baudet upright with two sound-boxes in the corners
behind the extreme ends of the bridges, lightly built onto the board (the
brochure we found inside makes no mention of them). We are trying to buy a ca.
1900 Mathushek upright with a double board with both panels attached to the
single set of ribs.

Rosamond Harding's _The Piano-Forte_ mentions an 1836 patent for a piano with a
double soundboard joined at their edges (and the first complete metal frame) by
Wheatly Kirk, another in 1842 by Johann Potje with a secondary bridge joining
them. Henry Pape (of course) experimented with them, as well as John Broadwood
(1783), Johann Anders (1824) and John Gunther (1828). In a slight refinement of
the idea, John Steward attempted to incorporate most of the violin family into
his 1841 Euphonicon by having separate sounding boxes corresponding in dimensions
to violin, viola and 'cello. There are others...

Pape, Potje, Anders, Gunther and Steward retained spacing approximate of violin
plates (or its relatives'), where Broadwood and Wheatly supplant the bottom of
the instrument with the additional board. No mention is made of the placement of
posts when they were used, though it might be that the violin practice was
carried over (essentially what they were doing in the first place) by offsetting
them somewhat from the bridge.

The manual for Zuckermann's "Z-box" harpsichord kit suggests adding a post if
downbearing is bad. Hendrick Broekmann is reproducing a German instrument with
the 16' choir on a second, raised soundboard.


I can only guess as to the influence some of these had on tone; one maker
suggests the upper board might be made of metal, and most of the examples are
variously experimental. At least for the earlier instruments there were greater
issues affecting tone than could be addressed by dual resonators, and enclosed
boxes essentially were made with structural bottoms or back panels anyway.
Certainly these attempts were more complicated to construct than usual but this
need not be the exclusionary factor in itself - Maccaferri's Selmer (D?) guitars
have a smaller second back inside which makes these instruments quite prized
tonally (M. went on to invent and license a range of successful plastic string
instruments).

I suppose while admiring the (probably bowed) sound of the violin, these makers
discovered for themselves that the piano with tied resonances exhibited some of
the same features as pizzicato on violin: short, loud tone (with posts),
'wolf-tone' ringing plate and cavity resonances, etc. I wouln't count these as
tonal improvements.

Clark