VT wrote: >I think that a modern flat strung grand would be worth >looking into. I can only speculate, but my thinking >is that the main advantage of the overstrung layout >has to do with a more central placement (away from the >rim) of the bottom notes on the bass bridge. All that happens is that the low tenor and bass bridges change position. The same areas of the soundboard effectively have bridges on them. This "central bridge" is non-reason #2 for the cross-strung design. [non-reason #1 is that any supposed increase in string length by crossing them is meaningless]. On the other hand, here's some potential genuine reasons: (1) By angling the bass strings the bass tuning pins have to move to the left so the strike points are in the right place, enlarging the spine side of the piano, which is balanced by widening the tail, effectively widening the soundboard area in absolute (not just proportional) terms. Of course this could just as easily be done with a straight-strung design too if desired, as Julius Bluethner noticed. (2) A cross-strung piano scale better balances the string forces on the frame, allowing the easier use of "larger" (i.e. thicker) strings. James Horsfall's remarkable high tensile strength steel wire was first seen in public around 1850. The patent was awarded in 1853 [the metallurgical process is still called patenting]. Intensive marketing, including to the US, of this wire began in 1854, after the merger of Webster's and Horsfall. So tensile strength suddenly nearly doubles overnight in 1854. How to take advantage of this on a piano scale without going into implosion? In steps Henry Steinway first at the tape with his 1859 patent solution. Voila. And (3) [the icing on the cake]: a single cast iron frame improved efficiency and production costs significantly. Win-win situation. It's all in the timing. And that was perfect for HS to make a Gates-worthy fortune. While we're on "real reasons", the piano history books get this stuff all wrong. Was the iron frame really so innovative because it allowed higher tension scales to be used as is so often repeated? In other words the modern piano exists because some genius came along and stuck some iron in a piano so they could slap some thicker wire in the scale and get higher tensions? Duh. Look at it the right way and it makes much more sense. Innovative new wire comes along. Within five years we have Henry Steinway's cross-strung solution, with one piece cast iron frame tacked in for added commercial bonus. Without Henry Steinway some other solution would have come along and we would still have a modern piano. Without James Horsfall we could not have the modern piano, cross-stringing or not. That guy was the real genius. >Part two of the problem is marketing. It's one thing >to market an unusual instrument design to the spinet >buyers, and another to sell such a thing for $200000. > .... a brave soul should decide to build the best piano >regardless of what is traditional, with some top notch >marketing mystique, they could pull off a low >volume/high price boutique strategy. How about $20,000? Would that make a difference? Stephen -- Dr Stephen Birkett Piano Design Lab Department of Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON Canada N2L 3G1 tel: 519-888-4567 Ext. 3792 Lab room E3-3160 Ext. 7115 mailto: sbirkett[at]real.uwaterloo.ca http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett
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