Ron In regard to the Bleuthner you are contemplating rebuilding: I have worked on a few Bleuthners and have enjoyed their unique approach to building a contemporary piano. Both were turn of the century instruments, as I recall, and incorporated the 'aliquot scale" (I believe that is what it is called) into their acoustic system. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about -- and I assume that your Bleuthner, Ron, has an aliquot scale -- it is a series of strings not struck by the hammer yet attached to the bridge that vibrate sympathetically when excited by the vibrations of the acoustic structure of the piano. They are separate strings, each having its own tuning pin, and are meant to be tuned along with the other strings in the piano. As far as production status of the piano, I saw a syndicated article in the Arts section of some paper a few years ago (I should have saved it but did not), that outlined the recent attempts by some individual to market the Bleuthner in this country. It is an East German Piano, made in Leipzig, and had been in production throughout the "cold war" period. With the toppling of "the wall", better access to material and new markets encouraged increased production, apparently using all the old scales, jigs, procedures, etc. I'm certain you could open up some sort of dialogue with the factory. As far as the single stringing, I agree with Dennis at St. Olaf (did I get those names right??), It's really not that time consuming once you get the hang of making the rear loop. If your hands are not ready to take on the task and you haven't fashioned some sort of jig already, the Cleveland Chapter made a whole bunch of jigs for that particular purpose that we used to sell at State Conferences. I think there is a couple hundred sitting in someone's garage somewhere, one of which I could probably unearth for you. Cheers! Ken Sloane, Oberlin Conservatory PS -- Glad we're talking pianos again
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