Itty Bitty Baldwin

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Nossaman" <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: March 27, 2001 9:33 PM
Subject: Itty Bitty Baldwin


> Hi gang,
>
> I tuned a Baldwin B1 (according to the sticker under the keybed) today,
the
> only one I've seen. I hadn't seen the piano for about four years, so I
> looked it over with a little different eye than I had in the past. It's
> around 150cm long, and has some rather unique features. Accu-just hitch
> pins are immediately noticeable, as is the unusual thickness and mass of
> the plate for this small a piano. The bass bridge is semi-log, and curved
> in the direction it should be, rather than in the direction they usually
> are - though the back scale is too short in the low bass, badly choking
the
> low end. Likely the result of compromise to fit in a specified case size,
> rather than by choice.

A bit of both, actually. All piano design is a compromise. Anybody who tells
you differently is either lying for marketing reasons -- they are lies even
so -- or they simply doesn't understand the problems involved. In the case
of the short backscale on the B it was a compromise between getting a
reasonable backscale vs. fitting in a speaking length dictated by marketing.

It was my own fault, really -- the Baldwin console has the same speaking
length at A-1 and I had pointed out it might be possible to fit that same
A-1 speaking length into this little design. From that point on it became a
mandate.

Still, the backscale is about 50% longer than it is in several somewhat
larger grand pianos on the market, including at least one 5' 7 1/2" (171 cm)
piano many folks rave about. It is also longer than at least one 5' 10 1/2"
(179 cm) piano on the market. So There!



> The plate perimeter didn't follow the rim all
> around, and there were no shrinkage stress relief holes in the plate. Gold
> rope covered the soundboard/rim joint wherever the plate didn't follow the
> rim contour. Underneath, a set of fanned, taper feathered floating ribs
did
> what ribs do, only better than expected for a piano this size, while a
> brass weight at the end of the tenor bridge helped make for a quite
> reasonable bass/tenor break transition.

Does this piano have a laminated soundboard? The original was designed with
this in mind and the prototype using the proper laminated board sounded
quite good with it.



> Altogether not a bad little piano with a little softer hammer, though I'd
> like to see what the designer could do with it today with a freer hand.

It would have been nice to have had a bit more of a free hand on that
project, along with a slightly higher manufacturing budget. I'd have like to
given it a bit more structural stiffness, and, indeed the original drawings
had things like additional inner rim thicknesses, rim (belly) braces,
beefier bracing at the back of the rim, etc. These were all vetoed to get
the manufacturing cost down and the eraser took them all out. The prototype
was quite stable without them -- of course, it was built with a steel plate
and the strings were not very high on the pins.

I was not with the company during the transition between prototype and
finished product so I have no idea what compromises and/or changes were made
from the original concept and design as it was adapted for actual
production. It's fair to say that at least some would have been necessary.
Prototypes rarely make good production pianos, they need to be simplified
and adapted as they make the transition. Rarely can what is envisioned in
one's head make it through the process intact. In this case it was not just
the piano design that was being developed, but an entirely new manufacturing
process as well. I had designed the piano to be built a certain way and had
sketched out the assembly line. I have not seen the final results of those
ideas and sketches so I don't know how much came through intact.

I have also seen little of the piano since I left the company other than a
few I've encountered in showrooms and at trade shows. Sadly, no two of them
have been the same. Quality control seems to have been a problem that
plagued this piano throughout its production life. Only one thing has been
consistent -- on every one I've seen, the plate has been stressed much
higher that I would have thought possible. Certainly higher than anything I
ever envisioned during the design stage. The strings have been set higher on
the hitch pins than I would ever be comfortable with. The intention was that
the strings be set 5 mm above the plate surface. Anything over this is, in
my opinion, at least, too high. I've seen them as high as 12 mm off the
plate surface -- do the numbers.

Certainly, I would do things differently today. That was the best I could do
under the circumstances in the late 80s. Unfortunately, in the piano design
business I've had to pretty much learn as I've gone along. There are no
schools that teach this stuff and, with the exception of Lew Herwig, there
have been no mentors. When I started out, it was pretty much all art (a
fancy way of saying 'trial and error'), now there is a liberal amount of
science mixed in. Progress is being made and will continue to be made as
long as we keep working on the science part. We now all have better than a
decade of additional thought and learning behind us. We have a lot of class
time -- by the time I pass on I hope to have shared most of what I've
learned along the way and I hope to have learned most of what others are
willing to share. There is also a lot of pianotech time behind us all that
wasn't available in the late 80s -- ideas get tossed around the world pretty
fast here.

The little B was the best I could do in the late 80s. The Walter 190 grand
and the Fandrich Vertical were next steps in my thinking evolution and were
the best I could do in the early 90s. The process goes on and progress
happens. Yes, I think I am doing better now than I was in the 80s. I've
little evidence to support the assertion, but I've tried to not stop
thinking through the time following those projects. You'll see the results
of my current thinking Real Soon Now.



> The thing I really liked about the piano was the pinblock. This was one of
> the nicest feeling, most uniform blocks I've ever had the pleasure to turn
> pins in. It didn't feel remotely like the usual Baldwin graniteblock, and
> I'm wondering if it was something different.

Yes, it's cheaper. And it won't pass the boil test.

Regards,

Del