Sneaky Steinway

[Overs Pianos]

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Alan and all,

At 7:21 PM -0700 7/8/04, Alan Forsyth wrote:

>It is a Steinway. This one has the third bridge. What amazes me is 
>that the speaking length of the first wound string in the tenor, C 
>sharp 29, is about 13 inches shorter than its neighbouring plain 
>string.

That's because this Steinway (early O) was a serious attempt at 
building a quality piano in this size. With their later instruments, 
it would seem that the serious endeavour transformed into one of 
making a buck. Note that these early pianos have very thick rim 
sections for a piano of this size. In an effective scale design the 
speaking length must be shortened between the last plain strings and 
the first covers (as they are on this piano). D30 is the lowest plain 
strung note on this piano, which is a better place to break on a 
piano of this length, but no manufacturer today has the courage to do 
it. Most 'designers' are still stuck on note C28 - Bfl26 as the 
lowest plain strung treble note. Try it on the scaling sheet. It 
can't and doesn't work.

>  The bass break starts at note E20.

Indeed. But in this piano the real break is at C#29/D30. However the 
first few covered notes on the tenor bridge are also trichords. These 
should be ditched and the piano re-scaled so that it has bichords 
from E20 right through to C#29. The suspended bass bridge needs to go 
as well. The speaking length on A1 will need to be reduced to about 
135 cm from the original 140. Inner rims don't make good sound boards.

This model had a compression crowned board with quite shallow 
soundboard ribs, and they mostly are collapsed. These pianos would be 
a good candidates for rescaling and redesigning the sound board 
(while keeping the tenor bridge). Actually its the only six foot 
length piano which is worth remanufacturing (all manufacturers 
included).

>   As you can now see the capo bar is only in the treble. The tenor 
>and bass has the agraffes which made the piano an absolute pig to 
>tune. The strings kept jumping back into the kink created by the 
>agraffes.

Poor rendering is common with these pianos. However, the problem is 
that the understring felt is binding with the strings, making 
rendering almost impossible. When destringing these pianos, try 
running your finger along the underside of the original strings 
(which look shiny and clean underneath). You'll notice that there are 
very small rough spots on the wire. These cause the strings to bind 
on the understring felt. I hold designs where the counterbearng 
segments are bearing hard on the understring felt in low regard. The 
Bechsteins with their very wide felt bearings become a tuners 
nightmare when they get older. When restringing pianos with this type 
of layout, we fit a counterbearing bar between the tuning pin fields 
and the felt. If the bar is set to take most of the load off the 
understring felt the rendering will be significantly improved. 
Furthermore, the practice of setting a too-short distance between the 
bearing felt and agraffe (as Steinway and Bechstein still do) tends 
to restrict the tone a little. I notice that Yamaha seem to have 
discovered that this is a problem also. Their later pianos have more 
free string distance between agraffe and bearing felt. We've been 
increasing the free segment length to around 20 mm in retrung pianos 
since 1995.

>If anyone knows the model designation please tell me. The serial # 
>is 90964.  (1899)
>
>The soundboard is plastered in decals dedicated to kings and queens, 
>emperors and many other a%"&*%*# 's governing Europe at the time, so 
>it is definitely a Hamburg.

This model always was smothered with 'Royal spruke'.

Ron O
-- 
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
    Grand Piano Manufacturers
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Web http://overspianos.com.au
mailto:info@overspianos.com.au
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