[pianotech] Broadwood Barless Grand

[Alan Forsyth]

Hi Del

Your touching upon the straight strung idea is not a coincidence when talking about the barless grand. Decades ago when asking the olde codgers as to the purpose of the barless grand, I was informed that the reason was for purity of sound. Again asking about the popularity of straight strung grands and uprights well in to the 20th century, (here at any rate), the answer was the same - purity of sound. It apparently was to avoid that jangling metallic sound if I could put it that way. It was believed that the iron struts caused acoustic interference in an overstrung arrangement and even the strings themselves crossing over each other created an interference in the sound as well. 

The Broadwood barless piano is a particularly easy piano to tune aurally and made even more so by the absence of clutter on the desktop as it were (nothing in the way)! The Broadwood straight strung grand of the same era has the easiest bass to tune that I have come across even though it has wound trichords way down into the low bass. 

AF
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Delwin D Fandrich 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 7:56 PM
  Subject: Re: [pianotech] Broadwood Barless Grand


  I'm not saying I don't like the idea--if nothing else they were beautiful to
  look at--but I think I'd have gone about it a bit differently. With a little
  creative thought the action could have been constructed in a way that would
  have made the gap unnecessary. The bass/tenor break could have been made a
  little smoother but playing around with the string angles some. I also think
  it would have been interesting to play around with a flat-strung version of
  the idea. Flat-strung designs take some effort to get them to develop a
  nice, clean bass but it can be done. This would make it possible to develop
  an absolutely seamless bass-to-tenor transition. And it would have made the
  whole thing even more striking looking. Ah, well, it's unlikely anyone is
  going to do anything like this again. Too bad, it could be a nice niche
  market for somebody.

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