Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: November 10, 2001 6:16 AM
Subject: Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?


> I am regulating an action out of a 4' 7" 1973 G. Steck Aeolian. (Isn't
there
> some kind of law against manufacturing pianos that are shorter than they
are
> wide?) I listened to the voicing on the piano prior to action removal by
> going up and down the keyboard. The middle tenor and up sounded like a
> piano. The middle bass and below sounded like a typical spinet bass. The
low
> tenor sounded like loud rubber bands, and the upper bass was very, very
weak
> and ultra spinet-sounding (both effects increasing as you approached the
> break). The bass/tenor break on this piano is tonally by far the worst
> example of a bad break I have ever heard (by some large multiple).

I would suspect something. Clearly, these are not the finest examples of the
pianobuilders art, but you shouldn't be hearing strong tonal abnormalities
like you describe. If you were having problems with just the low tenor I'd
say look at its proximity to the inner rim. But that wouldn't explain the
upper bass, the bridge of which is usually excessively mobile on designs
like this.


>
> Should I be suspecting a loose bridge or two here or some other structural
> failure?

Some other ideas--
    Could something have been spilled on the hammers?
    Could something have been spilled on the strings?
    Is the sound you're hearing restricted to wrapped strings? Or are some
of the plain         steel string unisons in the tenor also affected?
    Is this a laminated soundboard? If so, could it be delaminating?
    Are the ribs intact? And glued to the soundboard?
    Are the bridges intact? Any splits? How are the bridge pins?
    Could somebody have wedged something between the bellybraces (are there
        any?) and the soundboard to 'restore crown?'
    Could the bridges (or any part of the soundboard) be contacting the
plate?
    Could something be wedged underneath the plate against the soundboard?


>
> Or is it possible that this piano was actually designed/built this
> way with the observed tonal characteristics? Is the observed
> blubbery-rubber-band sound from the low tenor simply an extreme example of
> the effects of lowering the tension of the strings in that area to get the
> desired pitch (hockey-stick-bridge and all that).

Well, no one wasted a whole lot of time 'designing' these pianos. But, no,
it probably didn't sound like you're describing when it was new. While the
low tenor will suffer from the hockey-stick bridge, the upper bass would be
unaffected. And even with sloppy design work and sloppy manufacturing it
isn't all that hard to come up with a decent upper bass even in one of these
little things.

With a good tuning, decent hammers, a reasonable action regulation and a bit
of voicing even a piano like this should sound fairly musical through most
of the scale. (Just ignore the first octave or so.) So, yes, I'd be looking
for something to be 'wrong.'

Del