double-wound strings

[John Delacour]

At 11:06 AM +1100 12/9/01, Ron Overs wrote:

>Indeed Ron, there's nothing like reducing a 1.4 mm typical lowest 
>note core wire (on say a 185 cm grand) down to 2.25 mm [typo:  1.25 
>= mwg 22.5 JD ] and double covering it, often with more copper mass 
>to further lower inharmonicity and and improve what I would describe 
>as an 'openness' of tone (on that same 185 cm grand). It will also 
>move the % break up to improve tuning stability of a bass singles. 
>Furthermore, the smaller core wire will make the back scale act as 
>if its longer, on account of the reduced stiffness of the back scale 
>wire segment. This can be a real plus when working on short pianos 
>with a 100 mm back scale bass.

Yes, this sounds very similar to my thoughts on the question as 
regards the 6' piano, which is a sort of "transitional size".  It's 
interesting that Bechstein's Model A (185 cm. post 1900) was the 
point where Bechstein opted for 12 d/c and broke away from the 
religion.  Blüthner goes much further; whereas Bechstein has 
originally

A1 131.1 cm.  23.5 + 65/185

the Blüthner Styles 5 and 7  (5'10" and 6'3") have something like

A1 125.8 cm.  20 + 80/175

A1 138.7 cm.  20 + 80/170

On their very acceptable Style 4 5' grand, A1 is on a #18.5 core and 
the gauge numbers actually get thinner towards the bass.  Blüthner 
was an extremist.

>  Even when rescaling a D, we reduce the 1.7 mm diameter core to 1.5 
>mm and increase the copper mass somewhat, the tone is to more 
>pleasing to my ear.

When it comes to concert pianos, there are special factors.  On a D, 
I reduce the core to 26, and not 25, and also add a bit more copper 
as you do.  When I attended the inaugural concert in Wales for the 
first Stuart piano in the Western Hemisphere, I was more impressed 
with the inability of his great long bass to make itself heard in the 
hall and the general feeling that I was listening to an extremely old 
Bechstein, than I was by his very airy-fairy pre-concert lecture in 
which he demonstrated the ability of the piano to sustain and 
complained that "all the sound in a Steinway goes to the middle", 
whatever he meant by that.  When I questioned him closely about his 
aims in the design of the bass, he was at a loss to find anything 
useful to say at all.  Sustaining power and the ability to separate 
each note from the others in the sound soup instead of sending them 
all "to the middle"  seemed to be his selling points.  When after he 
concert I spoke to the pianist and mentioned that from where I sat 
the bass was very faint, I was told they had had to change the 
planned program because of the hall's acoustics, which absorbed the 
bass.  A friend of mine who regularly plays in the hall had not heard 
about this.

It's hard to make the bass of a concert grand "unpleasing to the 
ear", unless you're Bösendorfer of course, but it is certainly 
important that the piano should be audible in staccato and legato 
playing throughout the range and that the attack and the low partials 
should be optimized.

>I suspect a great majority of manufacturers choose to single cover 
>the singles for cost savings.

I doubt it nowadays.  The cost of copper is very low and it takes 
less than a minute longer to make a d/c string than a s/c.  In the 
past, the ratio of material costs to labour costs was very different 
and the "weight" of the strings was a factor for unscrupulous makers, 
at least in England.  However, this never led to the use of s/c 
strings rather than d/c.  I think it's more a question of the 
increased importance of the extremes of the scale as music moved from 
the classical age through to the Liszt/Busoni age and people began to 
see that these notes were actually being used by a few players and 
needed to sound purer.

JD