Old Chickering Concert Grand

[Clark]

Hi Roger,

Certainly there are constraints in (re)scaling which should be addressed and
scaling programs make this a fairly straight-forward process; however, the
one I use sometimes presumes too much.

The main difference in the old Chickering scales is a lower apparent
inharmonicity in the wound bass strings. While scaling is a large factor,
length, back-scale, hammers and bridge placement also contribute to this
effect; straight strung instruments can have a more consistent bridge
location throughout the compass which seems to lend the bass much greater
clarity, and they project much differently off lids than do overstrung
instruments.

In terms of scaling, though, with older instruments especially I attempt to
replicate the original intended result while evening up tensions and
inharmonicity, which is possible with just about any method of scale
calculation (excepting ye olde ear-and-weights-on-the-string technique).
Scaling bass strings often can be a fairly artistic task.

I switch between Scale Designer for the Atari and MS Excel spreadsheets. I
started using Excel because I could customize a lot more, and easily change
determining factors. These might be wire with different mass and MOE, or it
might be the matched pair of Brambachs a quarter-tone apart that I always
wanted ;)

Some of the possible parameters unfortunately are impractical: though silver,
iron and aluminum wound bass strings would be great, I don't imagine any
piano string winders stock these anymore.

Clark