Steinway strike line

[John Delacour]

At 10:56 AM -0800 12/1/01, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:

>I'm not sure these were 'modifications' in the sense of the term you
>probably mean. It has been my impression over the years that these were/are
>problems with the plate patterns that simply crept in over the years. The
>capo tastro portion of the mold is up in the cope and is dealt with
>separately from the rest of the pattern.
>
>I suspect that most of the Steinways you get there would have been in
>Hamburg, no? And hasn't Hamburg, over the years, had their own plates cast
>somewhere in Europe? If this is the case, you won't encounter the same
>problems we do with the NY pianos. But do check. I'd be real interested to
>know if this is actually a design strike line problem or a pattern problem.

Well Dale's posting immediately reminded me of this supertech's 
hammer line in the D I had to sort out recently.  As I said, my pupil 
would not tell me who was responsible for the previous work, so I had 
to use devious means to find out and the first colleague I spoke to 
identified the man correctly as soon as I mentioned this bite in the 
line.  I put it down to standard bore hammers, which it might still 
be because I'm probably one of three people in England that bore 
their own hammers, but apparently he makes a religious point of it. 
This was a D from 1980.

What you say of the patterns seems likely, but that reminds me of a 
burning question I've meant to ask for ages:  does anyone know in 
what year Steinway lost all the patterns in a fire and had to make 
new?  This would have been a long while ago and probably in Hamburg 
but not necessarily in time of war.  Landmarks in piano history like 
this are quite significant, like the years Röslau gobbled up Pöhlmann 
and Giese, burped loudly, gave a two-fingered salute and started 
using plough steel to make piano wire.  But several books could be 
written of the factory fires.

JD