Steinway B Scale Conversion

[John Delacour]

At 9:28 am +0200 2/4/07, Aras wrote:

>This scale was made on demand from a customer who wanted a more 
>powerful bass which they surely got. It was made for more than 10 
>years ago and not even hard playing pianists have broken any 
>strings. It was an example to show the move of the bass/tenor 
>"breake". Please behave JD, you have no reasons for your ironic 
>arrogant comments.

On the contrary I have every reason, and there is nothing arrogant 
about my comments.  Let others calculate the tension of that scale 
and see who they think has the more reason.  The lengths for the 20 
notes on the bass bridge are printed below.  When I see a bass scale 
that requires the wire for the greater part of the scale to operate 
at over 80% of the actual breaking strain, as high as 86% for one 
note, I know I'm looking at a recipe for disaster.  I am at present 
being asked to replace, one by one as they break, the original 
singles on a 7' Bšsendorfer that is played for 6 - 8 hours per day by 
a young concert pianist and has strings under less strain than yours 
but much too tight.  The tuner is sure he is going to break more and 
so am I with over 20 years of string-making experience and plenty of 
mistakes well behind me.

mm : 151.2, 149.5, 147.8, 146.0, 144.3, 142.0, 139.6, 137.3, 134.9, 
132.2, 129.5, 126.7, 124.0, 121.2, 118.3, 115.5, 112.6, 109.7, 106.8, 
103.9

JD