Straube grand

[Ron Nossaman]

Interesting day today. I petted three dogs, eight cats (that's "eight", not
"ate"), and two ferrets, met four left handed people, and tuned (among
others) a Straube grand. You'll have to deal with your own livestock, but
the Straube was a new one on me. It was a four foot something-or-barely with
three bridges. The bass and tenor bridges were in relatively normal and
expected places, but the third bridge was like an extension to the low end
of the bass bridge, and was behind the tenor with it's strings running
between the tenor and bass string planes! That's three layers of strings at
the crossover. The bass was entirely monochords (about a dozen) and at an
extreme angle to the belly bar. I assume that's why they were all
monochords, I don't think you could have gotten any bichords in there at
that angle without the hammers hitting adjacent strings. The transition
bridge had two monochords, presumably to acoustically blend the transition
(didn't work), and another four or so bichords. The low tenor bridge had the
beloved hockey stick curve at the end with another three or four bichords
before the plain trichords started. Altogether, it didn't sound or tune any
better or worse than any other funky little grand. It was sort of tubby and
clangy, all at once, but it was sure weird looking. Has anyone else seen on
of these? How many of them are out there?
 Ron