<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>RE: Bass Bridge Position-upright</title></head><body> <div>At 12:31 -0700 11/3/08, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>I love seeing these old things. The old upright has long been maligned and discounted as not being a "real" piano. Yet with some decent design work they can, and do, rival grands with scales of comparable length.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Quite so.  A few weeks ago I bought an old Kirkman 4'2" "Vertical Iron Grand" in on eBay in pretty poor shape.  It had an under-damper action but this, I discovered when it arrived, was a pretty mediocre affair (probably by Langer) probably retrofitted in the 1930s.  Nevertheless it works and once I had brought it up to pitch it astounded me with its power and quality and clarity of tone.  In spite of the short vertical bass strings, provided they are not sounded individually, the bass is terrific.  I simply can't stay away from this piano.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Last week I discovered another smaller one on eBay, certainly not worth restoring but with good ivory and an original Kirkman French-made under-damper action.  This I will restore and fit to the good one.  It will cost me a round trip of 180 miles with the cattle trailer and the stool will pay for the petrol.</div> <div><br></div> <div>The soundboard grain runs horizontally and the bars are vertical.  Today I looked at the stringing scale (12 d/c singles, 12 bichords, 5 covered trichords on the bass bridge) and discover that the tension of the steel strings is a pretty even 165 lbs reducing in the high treble to about 150 lbs.  It has agraffes all the way through.</div> <div><br></div> <div>It's very rare for a piano to thrill me as this one does and I will have to assess the results of each stage in its restoration to be sure of not losing or masking the qualities it has.  Certainly there will be no need to make any changes to the soundboard or the scale but the wire and the hammers will need to be watched carefully.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Although the present 1930s hammers look cheap and nothing special, they are producing the best sound from the piano.  Whoever fitted them used 1/4" shanks, which are like tree-trunks, but again the sound is incredible.  I took a left-over hammer-head from a quite heavy set of Abel Wurzen AA hammers and fitted it in what would be its proper position in the scale (note 68) on another piano.  On this piano the hammer was far too big in this position and the result is striking : it produces a very pure sound but of far less power than the original hammer for a given effort, and even with more effort it will not produce the brilliancy of the original hammer.  I then moved the new head to a position lower in the piano where it matched in size the original hammers and hey presto! it is hardly distinguishable from its neighbours, besides which it has a 7/16" shank.  The original hammer it replaced I moved to the higher position and sure enough I got the same pure weak sound.  So I must be sure to fit hammers that are small like the originals, and pretty dense also.  And the whole question of hammer weight would make an interesting discussion.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Now there is nothing unorthodox (for 1890) about this piano.  What gives it its fundamental quality is 1. a good soundboard 2. good string scaling 3. undoubtedly the 45 mm. bridge, 4. The use of agraffes, which I do really consider superior, and 5. quite likely the vertical stringing!  But what gives it the elusive qualities that give the player the feeling he's playing a good grand I have yet to discover.  I have four or five vertical strung pianos of different makes and about the same size that will be useful points of comparison when they are all up and running.</div> <div><br></div> <div>JD</div> <div><br></div> <div><br></div> <div><img src="cid:p06240802c3fcabbc740c@[10.0.0.1].1.0"></div> <div><img src="cid:p06240802c3fcabbc740c@[10.0.0.1].1.1"></div> <div><br></div> </body> </html>