That's interesting that you find the need to boost the tension in notes 20 - 26. I find that I prefer to drop the tension slightly from note 20 - 26 on Steinway pianos when compared with the original. In fact, I find that the bichord section generally benefits from a reduction in tension as you can see illustrated below. Combined with using a thinner core wire dimension in the monochords (Ao is .051) makes for a nicer bass response with much clearer pitch recognition. That kind of change, btw, is fairly common these days with many stringmakers/scalers. This is a Steinway L that got a new board and a 5 note transition bridge. The top graph is the original scale, the bottom one is the modified scale. Tension is in red. You can see that notes 11 - 26 have been brought down somewhat and the low tenor smoothed out. The sound in the bass here has more than adequate power but it now feels like the bass is at least coming from the same piano as the rest of the scale. You can also see that the treble end has been boosted somewhat mostly changing the speaking lengths just slightly in the capo section mostly and trying to adhere a bit more to something somewhat more logarithmic. By looking at the purple line (speaking lengths) you can get a sense of the shape of the long bridge and tenor connector (bottom graph). Original Scale Modified Scale David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of erwinspiano at aol.com Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 6:46 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] BB Mason and Tenor Cross over Ron >Probably > primarily the end of the bridge affect. I think it needs mass there. More likely stiffness. Get high basses too heavy and they tend to clang. That seems true and is a change to be tried out on the next Stwy B But, If you get em too weak they tend towards nasal and thin. I've often requested that the string maker increase tension on notes 20 thru 26 on Stwy basses and others. Seems as scaling programs drop off the tension in this area more than I can tolerate aurally. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091220/96e4eca0/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 57614 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091220/96e4eca0/attachment-0002.png> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 54723 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091220/96e4eca0/attachment-0003.png>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC