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Hi Robin,
Your post was interesting.
>At 3:30 AM -0700 10/8/04, Robin Hufford wrote:
>
> I think the piano described by Alan is actually an A Steinway and not
>and O. The O has 26 notes in the bass and lacks a tenor bridge. What
>Alan describes below is an A; judging from the date, which if correct,
>indicates the piano is probably the third incarnation of the c. 6 foot
>one inch A. The first was an 85 note roundtail: then from 1893 to 1897,
>at least in the US, they made a second form which was the 88 note
>roundtail- in my opinion a tremendous piano much superior to the 85
>note, then the roughly parabolic shape of the tail was changed and
>"modernized" to the half-round shape used in the concert grand; at the
>same time the tenor bridge was eliminated and the piano left with a 20
>note bass. A few years later the A was dropped from production and
>brought back after an interval of a few years in the 6 foot four inch
>form which, factually at least, should be referred to as a different
>model.
I've heard technicians from New Zealand refer to the 6'4" piano as the long A.
>. . . Checking on the serial number Alan gives I believe the piano is about
>1896 - 97 and, may, therefore be a round-tail. My browser did not
>contain an image if one was posted of this piano. Actually, after
>having written that above it occurs to me that it must be a round-tail
>as it has a tenor bridge.
The image confirmed that it is a round tail with a tenor.
>The round tail, 88 note actually had two bichords followed by seven
>trichords, all wrapped. The elaborate decal reciting various royal
>personages in Europe appears, in several forms, on the American piano
>also and so, does not necesarily indicate an instrument from Hamburg.
>. . . With regard to the bass/tenor break there are any number of older
>six-foot American pianos which include anywhere from 25 to 28 notes in
>the bass, although few indeed that go to d30 as you note. Chickering,
>for example, long used 25. I would argue that bridge placement is as
>critical to an effective transistion as is scaling,
Agreed.
> and, of course, they
>can be looked at as one and the same from one point of view, and that a
>blanket condemnation of a bass under 28 or 29 notes is not justified as
>it disregards the effect on the transition of the bridge placement and
>scaling of the tenor.
Not necessarily so. I agree that bridge placement is every bit a
critical as scale with regard to tonal equality at the transition.
But the percentage of breaking strain, and therefore the tuning
stability, will mostly be compromised should a designer choose to
place the lowest plain wire at note B27. Even if the bass strings
are set across at a lower angle, pushing the bass bridge at A1
further out into the middle of the tail area, to allow an
un-hockey-sticked long bridge to run up towards the back corner of
the straight side, the longest practical speaking length would be
about 130 cm (51"). This would result in a tension of around 37%,
just slightly higher than the 36% of the D's F21 at 183 cm. While a
131 cm B 27 would work quite well (Kawai KG5s 131.3 cm B27 is proof
of this), I haven't seen such a length in any 6' class of grand piano
to date. The tenor bridged A's F21 at 110.8 cm works quite well with
the chosen covered bichord running at 46%, while its first plain
wire, D30, at 110.5 cm works well also at 37%. But the later A with
its lowest plain strung note, B27, at 114.8 cm and 25% is simply
unsatisfactory (hows that for diplomacy?). It is this model about
which I have been less than complimentary, not the earlier tenor
bridged version.
So clearly, with regard to tenor bridged 6' pianos, it is quite
possible for them to break at E20 and still maintain a desirably
small deviation of breaking strain % across the scale. Provided of
course, that enough notes are included on the tenor bridge to move
the first plain wire on the long bridge high enough to achieve a
respectable tension. As I mentioned recently in a private post to
fellow pianotech subscriber, I believe that a tenor bridged A could
be transformed into an outstanding instrument if the tenor bridge was
changed to all bichords, and the speaking length of the first
tenor-bridge covered note C#29 was altered so that it was shortened
by only 15% from D 30, instead of the original 25%, and if the bass
bridge was changed for a standard bridge without an apron
(suspension) and A1 was shortened to 135 cm instead of the original
141 cm. It doesn't matter how close a designer places the agraffe of
A1 to the stretcher, 141 cm will position the bridge far too close to
the rim in a 6' piano, and the resultant short back scale will lock
up the board. Yamaha have joined forces with Steinway in proving this
with their latest C3, which now has an A1 which is up from 135 cm to
140. With its shorter backscale, it has a significantly weaker A1
than their earlier C3 model. At least the numbers are bigger for the
sales people. Pity about the tone.
>Chickering had a superior system in this respect, breaking after the
>25th note in the bass but using speaking lengths in the tenor that are
>much longer than the scales of most similarly sized Steinway style
>pianos.
Interesting. Does anybody know what the free back scale length and
speaking length was for this design at note Bfl 26?
> There is a marked difference between Steinway-style pianos,
>which seems to be the only class of design approaches with which a
>general familiarity is had by most commentators here and referred to
>generally here on the list with mostly negative commentary, and
>Chickering-style which address some of the issues frequently raised with
>reference to design, particularly the heavily criticized scaling of the
>20 note bass.
>
>For example, the characteristic placement of the bass bridge
>substantially closer to the edge of the board results in Chickering
>pianos with a significantly longer scaling per unit of case in the upper
>bass while at the same time inducing and tolerating a shortened first
>three or four notes relative to those in similarly sized Steinway
>pianos. The result of this approach, along with an effort made to
>bring the front terminations closer to the stretcher, is that speaking
>lengths, for what is is worth, in a Chickering 121 (a five foot four
>piano) are longer through much of the tenor and at least half of the
>bass wire than on a Steinway O which is c. five foot ten.
Are you saying that Chickering's high bass is positioned closer to
the rim while the low bass is positioned further away, with a longer
back scale? Unfortunately, there are very few Chickerings or Masons
here in Australia, and most of the Steinways are of German origin. I
would also like to see a scale of the S&S 6'4" A if anyone has it on
a spreadsheet.
> Similar
>contrast can be had with other Chickering models. There are variations
>on this approach also with other manufacturers. Many times some of
>what I read here which purposts to be "novel, new modern scaling"
>approaches, appear, with all due respect, to have been substantially
>anticipated by manufacturers such as Chickering or Mason & Hamlin and
>they appear to get little credit for such.
Maybe so, and if so I would be very interested to receive copies of
the scales you mentioned, anyone? But I don't remember anyone
actually publishing the details of their own scales on the list. I
know that the scales I have for my own proposed-pianos, the 280, 230,
200 and 185, ie. those scales which are destined for use in pianos
which are totally of my own design, are significantly different to
contemporary standard scales. Our current 225 is basically little
different in scaling to a Yamaha C7F with its 23 note bass, which
seems to have become the default standard in 7' class pianos, apart
from S&S - who continue to labour on with their F21 at 145.5 cm, 23
%. Since I have been using a bare Samick plate as the basis for our
225, while using a log scale of my own design, I am limited to
deviating little from the original Fenner/Samick creation, which has
G#24 at 154 cm, 36%. There's nothing modern about those numbers.
Steinway have had 36 % for the lowest long bridge note in their D
since before 1900. So from a tuning stability perspective, our 225 is
about as good or bad as a D.
Regards,
Ron O.
--
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
Grand Piano Manufacturers
_______________________
Web http://overspianos.com.au
mailto:info@overspianos.com.au
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