strings 'n stuph

[Paul S. Larudee]

Ron,

You're looking for a good reason.  You think it was done for design
considerations?  I find that hard to believe.  I think there's a good chance it was
done for a trivial reason, like finding a cache of iron winding stock in the right
width for that bichord and throwing it in with the rest of the copper windings.

Paul

Ron Nossaman wrote:

> As for the leftover
> strings found in storage and installed rather than let them go to waste -
> that must be it. Surely a manufacturer would take whatever time and effort
> was necessary to cycle obsolete parts back into the updated production run
> so they could save the $0.25 per piano it cost them to make those strings
> so they could be lost in storage. In fact, there are probably an equivalent
> number of more expensively produced copper wound strings in storage
> somewhere that were displaced from the assembly line to accommodate the use
> of the old steel wound foundlings. Just think of the income opportunity
> here for someone with the ambition and resourcefulness to track down those
> leftover copper wound orphans and travel the country retrofitting all those
> old mistreated Gulbransens to restore them to the original glory they were
> deprived of at birth.
>
> Now I don't need to know badly enough to drive 50 miles and spend an hour
> taking scale measurements which may or may not tell me anything in the
> final analysis in any case, but I really am curious to know why they went
> to the trouble to put steel wound strings in one bichord unison, surrounded
> by copper wound bichords. It had to cost them more to do this, and I'm a
> firm believer that a manufacturer isn't going to waste a nickle without a
> reason, so why was it done?
>
> The only thing I've come up with by way of speculation is that they might
> have had a longitudinal mode howler there, possibly accidentally designing
> in the worst possible dimensional combination, and settled on the steel
> wrap substitution as a more expedient and cheaper alternative to starting
> over with the scale design. A sort of post-disaster back patch. I just
> wanted to know if anyone had any information on it.
>
> This isn't an earth shaker, I know, but the information has considerably
> greater potential for future usefulness, to me at least, than Glenn Gould's
> taste in pianos. Not that that isn't informative. It is, just not useful.
>
> Ron N