[pianotech] Heintzman

[Albert Picknell]

That system, which Heintzman called the "Agraffe Bridge", creates a lot of drag on the strings, making some of those pianos very difficult to tune.  The grands have the same system, which makes replacing a treble string a bit of a pain; if you're lucky you might be able to feed the wire through blind, but if you're like me you have to take the action out and reach underneath.  But once you get those pianos in tune, they're quite stable.  Like Terry said, the older ones are nice instruments.

Heintzman also built a transposing upright.  I distinctly remember one I tuned in Toronto that had the most incredible high-treble tone I've ever heard; even at the age of ~90 years, it had amazing power and sustain.  It may have had something to do with the extra-wide soundboard the piano had because of the transposing feature.

There are Heintzman pianos being made in China now.  I don't think they incorporate the Agraffe Bridge system.

Cheers,
Bert

--- On Tue, 7/26/11, Terry Beckingham <t46xd8jb at xplornet.com> wrote:

> Living in Canada, we see lots of
> those. I believe Heintzman used that 
> system until sometime in the 1950s. The older ones were
> really nice pianos.
> 
> Terry Beckingham RPT
> 
> At 10:33 AM 7/26/2011 +0930, you wrote:
> >Tuned a Heinzman (Canadian built) pianola yesterday.
> Never see an agraffe
> >system like that one before. The casting of the iron
> frame and the work in
> >drilling all the holes for the wire.
> >This is something different. Any one want a photo of
> the system used, am
> >going back there on Thursday
> >
> >Tony
> >
> >Tony Caught
> >acaught at internode.on.net
> >0427 850 737