A tenor bridge conversion

[Ron Nossaman]

The only rationale I can come up with for the short bass and 
hockey stick tenor is that there is no rationale. These 
features weren't apparently consciously and intentionally 
designed by anyone who had a clue what they were doing, at 
least technically, so it seems to me that they weren't 
designed at all, but were just copied from others who 
themselves didn't have a clue what they had done. Alfred 
Savage didn't seem to me to have been too disoriented back in 
1842 when he outlined the problem and it's cause, so why are 
we still dealing with this same junk all these years and all 
these advances in technical understanding later? Either I'm 
not equipped to appreciate the hidden genius behind it, or 
there have forever been and still are plenty of idiots making 
piano design decisions out there. Having listened to the way 
the existing junk sounded, I can't help but wonder why the 
next manufacturing startup would copy the worst of it instead 
of some of the fine design ideas of the past. Maybe it's a 
cost consideration after all. No matter how badly we build 
this thing, it can't sound any worse than what we copied to 
produce it, and we don't need to hire engineers or learn 
anything technical in order to compete in the marketplace. 
It's a freebie, and we can concentrate our energies on sales 
technique instead. Whereas, if we tried to build a good piano, 
we'd be held responsible for making it sound like a good 
piano, and the required talent, education, and care would be 
expensive.

Or a manufacturer will hire competent engineers, and ignore 
their suggestions, churning out even more junk with the 
improved three position lid prop suggested by one of their 
dealers' salesmen.

I don't know. I can't come up with any sane explanation for it 
other than continued propagation of a deep and lasting 
ignorance. Sound doesn't matter, as long as it's LOUD. Just 
make sure the lid has the square footage to accommodate the 
family photos. But then how can you experience the wonders of 
the new lid prop sales point and still keep the pictures off 
the floor?

It's a mystery,
Ron N