At 7:51 AM -0800 1/24/02, David Love wrote: >John: > >Re the tensions on the Schiedmayer. You're right, they were all over the >place, zigzagging back and forth. When I recalculated the scale it came out >quite different. What gives with the original idea, do you know? There were two Schiedmayer factories: Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik (formerly J. & P. Schiedmayer) and Schiedmayer und Soehne. The history of the family and the relations between the two is probably either interesting or unprintable. I've spoken a couple of times with the last surviving representative who, until a few years ago was having the Schiedmayer uprights and grands made by Kawai - and they were quite nice. By this time the firm was making only celestes but they owned a huge tract of prime land in central Stuttgart. So far as I know, this land has now been sold for a considerable fortune and presumably old Mr. Schiedmayer is retired in great comfort. Both firms were very highly regarded in their day and won all the medals and the royal appointments etc. each victory of the one firm presumably increasing the chagrin of the other. I guess at the family feuds only from the few conversations I've had with Mr S. Both firms used very high tensions on the covered strings and the Schiedmayer und Soehne also in the plain wire. I've mentioned this before on the list. There was a craze at one time followed by certain makers for taking the wire to its limits in the quest for more power. I own a S&Soehne overstrung which certainly achieves that end, but I know they could have got as good results with a shorter scale and a different design. Nevertheless they are tremendous pianos. I always rescale the bass to make it more lively but simply make what adjustments I can in the plain wire scale without changing the bridge. I have only restored one S. Pianofortefabrik and loved it -- even better than the S & Soehne. That was a while ago and I lost the book years ago in which I used to record the scales, so I'm only familiar with the scaling of the bass. At 7:34 AM -0800 1/24/02, David Love wrote: >I don't know the metric, but the pins were .276" and .278" respectively. I >went to a # 2 at .282". That would be our 7.00 and 7.10 which is to say two and three sizes up from what I'd call the #0 I go 6.75, 6.90, 7,00, 7.10, 7.25, new plank, < back to zero < 7.35. 7.5 etc. JD
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