The Mother of all Bellyrails

[Delwin D Fandrich]

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Re: The Mother of all Bellyrails
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: Ron Overs=20
  To: Pianotech=20
  Sent: February 08, 2003 1:20 PM
  Subject: Re: The Mother of all Bellyrails


  At 9:38 AM -0800 8/2/03, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:


    I've been at this rewhatevering business since early in the 1960s. =
About the time I figure I must have seen most everything, someone like =
Chickering comes along with this:


  Thanks for the post Del, its a very interesting piano. It looks to be =
between 6'0" and 6'6"? Its interesting to see another older scale layout =
where the designer has had the courage to make the last plain wire E32. =
Some of the 'modern' designers could benefit by considering such =
possibilities. The trichord covered tenor section might better have been =
done as bichords from D#31 down, but nevertheless it is a vast scaling =
improvement on some of the dreadful 'modern' six foot grands with the =
lowest plain wire on note B27.

Well, let's not jump to conclusions just yet. All of the strings on the =
transition bridge were plain steel, not wrapped. Though they may well =
have been originally. The piano had been restrung and 'rescaled' some =
time back. I've not yet run the scaling through to see what was =
there....


  Spurious plate strut resonances would be well under control with this =
design also. I note also that the low end of the tenor bridge and high =
end of the bass bridge has been placed equidistant from the perimeter of =
the board. Some of the 'new breed' wide bodied grands, with their =
somewhat ordinary crossovers, leave much to be desired in this respect. =
Will you be rebuilding this piano Del? If so I look forward to hearing =
your impressions of its sustaining qualities post rebuild.

Yes, we'll be resomething, anyway. Haven't decided just yet what =
approach to take. I'm not sure I want to float the board as per the =
original. Nor am I sure I want to put all that extranious iron back in =
there.=20

And there is more to that bass bridge than meets the eye. At first =
glance there appears to be a substantial cantilever--O.K., there is a =
substantial cantilever--but on the bottom of the board there are some =
huge soundboard buttons--probably 40 or 45 mm in diameter and 25 mm =
tall--with some pretty substantial screws going up through them, the =
soundboard, through some carefully fitted spacers between the soundboard =
and the bottom of the cantilever and into the bridge body. In addition =
to the screws the spacers are solidly glued between the soundboard and =
the bottom of the bridge cantilever; in all mostly negating any effect =
it may otherwise have had.=20

>From the looks of them I'm quite sure these buttons, screws and spacers =
were fit at the factory as the piano was being built. I'm speculating =
that during production they discovered that bass bridge cantilevers =
didn't work all that well but it was too late to take it out. So they =
simply rendered it ineffective by putting in the spacers, buttons and =
screws.

Del

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