The small (170?) Phoenix which was shown at the CA PTG was an interesting piano. It had a spruce soundboard, but had the special bridge design. It was placed in a small room next to another of the same model that had a normal bridge, for comparison. I do not know if it was due to preparation or the design itself, but the bridge terminations were very inconsistent from note to note. Some notes had very serious sizzles and noises, especially in forte playing. In some others the tone had a strange muted sound. These reminded me of a very bright piano with a lot of duplex feed through, then you push down hard on the front duplex. The hammer still had a bright tone, but the sound was choked. I suspect these problems came from uneven pressure of the small soft pad at the center of the bridge agraffes, and to me this seems to be a problem that needs to be overcome in the design. On some of the notes, though, the bridge agraffes seemed to be working correctly, and there was a bright tone with long sustain and a lot of clear high partials. It was not unlike the sound from the Sohmer agraffe bridge in tone (I have restrung a few of these). But the design is better than the Sohmer from the standpoint of how the forces are applied to the bridge and soundboard, I think. I came away thinking that this idea may not be as simple and reliable as is needed for regular production pianos. As to whether one likes the sound of this kind of termination, that is a matter of taste. The added high frequency partial energy is, to me, not pleasant sounding, and it seems to be a tradeoff between tone quality and sustain in the treble. Perhaps this could be voiced nicely and still keep the singing qualities, but I wasn't quite so bold as to pull the action and try some voicing ;-) I do look forward to seeing the piano in Grand Rapids! Don Mannino RPT _____ From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 5:00 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steingræber Phoenix to the National Ric First, how is the sound, compared to the old Sohmers with agraffs on the bridge? Second, do you know what the composite material is made of? Looking forward to seeing and hearing the piano in GR Wim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090429/5a1c0fbf/attachment-0001.html>
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