1866 Steinway/Rebuild or Restore?

[Bdshull@AOL.COM]

Hi, Clark:

What I have to conclude a high pitch in early Steinways so far is:

1.  A85 speaking length, which looks odd all by itself - as I mentioned, note 
85 is 1 7/8", when a modern piano should have 2"+ at note 88.  

2.  Pscale data, in which the entire top half of the treble bridge is outside 
of the parameters, and more so as the scale moves to the treble.  The tension 
data is extremely low and the inharmonicity data extremely high.  I could 
send you a file if you were interested.   (I also entered data from a Style 4 
with a replaced soundboard (the work was done 20 years ago, and the bridge 
may have been moved;  only the lower 1/4 or less of the original bridge 
remains, and the rest is horiz. laminated pinblock material.  This scale 
works well on Pscale, but I wonder if the piano was not rescaled and the 
bridge pivoted in the low treble or tenor to add string length in the upper 
treble.)

3.  The opinion of a colleague who recently rebuilt a Style 2 by duplicating 
everything as much as possible, including the replaced soundboard.  He was 
pleased with the sound of the piano when he first chip tuned it--while it was 
very sharp.  He is now very unhappy with it at A-440.  I hope to look at this 
piano sometime - it is about 75 miles from me - maybe after the board has had 
a little time to settle in I can exclude it a little more from the equation.

4.  The Steinway fork data.  Not only did Steinway have that one A-457 fork 
in London, but a grad school colleague unearthed a reference to another very 
high Steinway fork - A-454 - on this side of the Atlantic from about the same 
period (I am taking the research class in my Master's program right now and a 
fellow student just presented an excellent paper on the history of pitch).  
He also reported that when a French govt commission established 435 in 1859 
that pitch was 50% lower than the prevailing pitch.   (I assume that means 
about 50 cents, which would make A-45? the "prevailing pitch.")

I am also interested in more information on Steinway's pitch.  I suspect that 
one of our luminaries might know more about this history - Bill Garlick may 
have found out about this in his patent research, or Steve Marcy.  This 
information might be contained in the archives at the library in Queens, and 
if Richard Lieberman is still the archivist he might have some info about 
this.  William Steinway documented so much of what he did that I wouldn't be 
surprised there is more info.

<>

It seems right.  The tough part here is that since the 1860's and 1870's 
Steinways were very modern in most respects.  IF the main difference is in 
pitch, and IF is established that they are built for a very high pitch, the 
the pianos can be very usable instruments when the adjustments are made for 
this in rebuilding.   I have less problem doing this on my Style 2 because 
the cabinet was so modernized 75 years ago, but it becomes a real issue if 
the piano is pretty much original.

Bill Shull, RPT


 

In a message dated 11/1/00 1:56:21 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
caccola@net1plus.com writes:

<< Hi again,
 
 I'm curious - I read the evidence for 457.2Hz is a single fork, and
 which was related to me after I first posted - perhaps it was used for
 chipping. As I only just found this out, have S&S any official
 standpoint on this issue, perhaps with better documentation in fact that
 they did scale to such a pitch? and Bill - what looked so strange about
 the scale in Pscale?
 
 
 
 
 Clark
  >>