Steinway bridge laminations - the saga continues

[John Delacour]

At 23:36 18/09/01 -0500, Ron Nossaman wrote:


>Then there's the new Boston I tuned last week, with the alternating light
>and dark vertical laminations and the 14mm thick bridge cap that looked for
>all the world like it was flat sawn, as near as I could get to it to see
>(or not to see as it may turn out).

I have 1907 and 1923 Hamburg model Os in for rebuild at the moment. I'll 
try to get round to comparing them this week.  I was restringing the bass 
on a (ca. 1905) model B last Thursday but didn't get the time or the 
opportunity to get the answer from this piano, which was in the customer's 
house.  One thing I did note was that the boxwood capping started from 
C64.  Do they still cap the treble with boxwood?  I know Fazioli does so 
and intuitively it seems like a good idea.

There is also an oldish (forget the date) Steinway patent for a bridge made 
of alternating laminations of maple and fir or spruce.  Whether this was 
ever put into production I don't know but unless one looked carefully, one 
might imagine it was all maple.

JD