Another question about a Schiedmayer with a strange device

[John Delacour]

At 11:36 23/08/01 +0300, Calin Tantareanu wrote:

>...regarding this piano: it has a strange device (round
>metal box with some wheels in it) installed under the soundboard, towards
>the left end of the keyboard.
>This device is connected to an extra pedal located to the right of the
>sustain pedal, and to two more rods which lead to the underside of the
>keyboard, where they seem to have been attached to some kind of knee levers,
>or maybe something else.....
>This whole device operates two wooden bars, one placed behind the dampers,
>and the other at the back end of the keys, on the keyframe. Just below the
>dampers and behind the hammers, touching them, are some kind of metal
>springs with a small red wheel on the lower side.
>
>The whole system doesn't work now, because some parts are missing.
>
>I wonder what it was supposed to to. My first thought was that it is some
>kind of mute, but the mechanism is far too complicated to be just that.

Almost certainly this is a 'tremolo' device which would keep the hammers of 
the depressed note burbling against the string in an approximation of a 
sustained note as though from an organ.  I have seen only one piano like 
this, which was a very beautiful Rönisch of about the same period.  The 
tremolo was in working order but I don't remember how it was activated -- I 
had a feeling it was pneumatic but perhaps it was clockwork or simply 
mechanical.

Such inventions were numerous in the period.  Brinsmead in his book of 1870 
is rather scathing about them and mentions also a patent for a device that 
kept the note sounding by using a current of compressed air.

Personally I found the attachment quite interesting and ingenious and was 
seriously thinking of buying the piano, though mainly because it was a 
Rönisch and in very fine condition.

On another question -- it was endless trouble with a Schiedmayer und Soehne 
that led to my setting up as a bass string designer and then maker.  These 
pianos were scaled impossibly tight in the bass and the top singles are 
miles above current breaking strains.  The quality of Poehlmann wire at the 
time was so incredibly good that I suppose it was possible to sell such a 
piano and not have any strings break before the guarantee ran out, but it 
would be impossible with today's grossly inferior wire (e.g. Röslau).  Both 
the Schiedmayer factories were exceptional in having used such a heavy bass 
scale, though Grotrian were pretty bad too.  I guess they were deluded by 
some theory that the greater the mass and tension the better or more 
powerful the tone.  This can be shown to be a very silly theory and luckily 
most makers realized this.  A Schiedmayer should always be rescaled in the 
bass.  Apart from this fault the Schiedmayers (like the Rönisch) was among 
the finest makes of the period, though I prefer Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik.

JD