1850's Pleyel Grand

[Richard Brekne]

Yes, I will be getting ahold of Anne for advice I am sure. 

In the meantime I remain totally fascinated with the sound that these 
old instruments are capable of... despite their age and all the obvious 
signs of problems. This one has a pinblock that really should be 
replaced.... but probably it will be repaired with the epoxy method.  
The soundboard has a few rather bad cracks... one in particular has 
pulled away from a couple of the ribs underneath on one side of the 
crack.  The instrument has a very nice boomy response... very round 
sound really and quite pleasant.

In this instrument the grain runs in a direction roughly 15 degrees off 
the bellyrail. Ribs are by and large about parallel to the bridge tho 
there are a couple cross ribs. There seems to be two types of cutoff bar 
systems. One rather obvious cutoff bar on the underside, and another 
curved one that you can see half of on the top side of the second photo 
I posted, tho you have to look pretty hard to spot it.

I really do wish I could hear some thoughts about how soundboard design 
and these low tension scales match to get the kind of sound these things 
have.  One has no way of knowing for sure... but if one imagines a 
significant basic quality degradation over 150 years and try to get an 
idea of how much nicer these may have sounded keeping the same basic 
overall sound spectrum in mind... its hard to see why everyone decided 
to copy Steinway in the end.  I mean regardless of what one thinks of 
Steinways.. and I like them very much...  how confining is that just 
<<one>> sound.  Especially considering the bredth of other fine sounding 
piano instruments. I just want to understand more about how they created 
some of those sounds.

Cheers
RicB





    Hello Ric,

    Anne and Chris Acker, sometimes on this list, recently did a very
    nice job
    restoring a similar but younger (c.1880) Pleyel for an owner here in New
    Jersey.

    Albert.