At 6:02 AM -0400 16/7/05, Farrell wrote: > >Thanks for all the responses. Either maybe I'm not so crazy after >all, or several others are just a kookey as me! This all makes for >good night time cranial processing..... > >Terry Farrell When someone throws an idea into the ring, there's no telling where it might lead - thankfully - however . . . There is one factor which might be an advantage with the overstrung layout. It allows for longer speaking lengths in the low tenor, provided that the bass bridge is positioned far enough away from the straight side to allow room for the longer tenor scale and its accompanying hitch pin belt. Some will argue that you can have a long scale on the plain wire string section of a straight or oblique layout provided the case is a wide bellied design, but I've not been particularly impressed with a number of the wide bellied cases I've heard in recent years. I realise that the examples I'm thinking of are overstrung, but I think the same lack of tonal focus would plague the straight strung layout if one were to use a wide belly. The wide bellied fashion is really raging in piano-design land at the moment. But its a fashion I have no intention of taking up. Since there should be a shortening of the speaking length from the last plain-strung note to the first covered wire, if this break is also positioned at the break between the tenor and bass in an overstrung design, it will yield a good transition and a lowest-possible minimum inharmonicity for a given length of piano. Now I realise that some will argue that we don't want the lowest possible inharmonicity at the crossover. That's OK if that's what one wants, but my preference is for a low inharmonicity scale, and the overstrung layout would seem to allow for this to be taken further than with straight or oblique stringing. I admit that the overstrung layout also makes a good tonal blend across the break more difficult to achieve, but that doesn't matter provided you are aware of the potential for disaster and position the bridges to achieve a similar stiffness for both bridges at the crossover point. It can be done, though we do see some rather ordinary examples in contemporary and not-so-contemporary designs from time to time. Ron O. -- OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY Grand Piano Manufacturers _______________________ Web http://overspianos.com.au mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au _______________________
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