Good Morning to all. I recently completed my 3rd re-string of my brief career..2 Baldwin Grands and a newer Wurlitzer Grand that had pre-maturely rusted. This last re-string has further convinced me of my conviction of the following: Stringing Braid is not necessarily necessary. There was alot of stringing braid that came off of this Baldwin(#17907..circa 1911)..the bass bridge wire was braided, and the low tenor to about A4 was braided. That's over 1/2 of the instrument being braided. Why? Is there some musical significance to stringing braid? If there is, I'm not hearing it. I am of the belief that a wire on a piano should be allowed to speak freely without any restrictions. The piano is the only stringed instrument that I can think of that uses a dampening agent(?) on its waste area for the purpose of........... That's my question: What is the purpose of stringing braid? If its purpose is to dampen overtones, aren't the overtones necessary in the production of sound? If the purpose of stringing braid is to 'pretty up' the piano, then I'm guilty of not wanting to pretty it up in that fashion, because I'm not hearing anything that requires it to be 'prettier'. I'm looking forward to the responses. -Phil Bondi (Fl.) phil@philbondi.com
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