Steinway B Scale Conversion

[John Delacour]

At 4:00 pm -0400 2/4/07, Erwinspiano at aol.com wrote:

>   How do we rectify in our thinking & scaling Êthe 9 wrapped tenor 
>notes on the long bridge of an Baldwin SF 10.ÊThis is a piano 
>similar in length to the S&S B.ÊTo my ear it only needs 5 unisons 
>wrapped. I just came away from a nice one built in 1987 & it's a 
>good sounding scale /piano. What am I missing?

Dale, I have no experience at all with Baldwins let alone have the 
speaking lengths of the SF 10 to enable me to comment on the matter 
at all, if indeed I understand your query.  To my mind if any 7 ft. 
piano needs any break notes (covered strings) at all on the long 
bridge in order to achieve a smooth transition, there is something 
amiss in the design of the piano.

At 11:01 am -0400 1/4/07, you wrote:

>  The first tension specs I calculated on note 21 [of Steinway B] 
>says more like 105 to 110 lbs per string.  Hence the rubber band 
>sound.

Certainly, whether it's 105 lbs. or 125, but your approaches and 
others' to rectifying the problem with the tenor break on the B 
surely point simply to a fault in the original design of the piano. 
So far as I recall there is also a tail-off of tension at the top of 
the plain wire scale with note 88 only 48 mm long or so.  The same 
drop in tension in the bottom steels exists also on the 5'10" model O 
and yet the break at 26/27 is not bad and no recourse is needed to 
covered notes on the long bridge.

However well-loved the Steinway B may be and however its various 
incarnations in America and Germany have achieved its reputation it 
is obviously not through perfect design on the part of Theodore 
Steinway.  Good marketing and a good dirty tricks department are 
important ingredients of a maker's success.  These are sometimes but 
not always accompanied by excellence of product, and Steinway is but 
one instance in the history of the pianoforte.

JD