---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment By the way Ric All Although I'm not a big historical sound guy I do respect it's merits & romantic notion of preserving history. The Sac. & Modest chapters have just experienced Billl Schulls Class on Early Steinway designs there are some things to consider when engaging this approach & a huge one is scaling, type of wire & original pitch design. In the mid 1880s The pitch levels went anywhere from A-430 to A-457. 457 is roughly !/2 step above modern pitch. All those short stwy scales were possible because of wire made before extrusion was common & it was called iron wire. Bills research which is both Massive & intensive has concluded that if one is restoring to original scales that pure sound wire is closer to the original iron wire which is softer but tonally more consistent with the wire produced during that time. He & I both agree, if your replacing the board then move or replace the bridge. Joe. I suspect your Chickering would have similar concerns unless you moved the bridge around, made a new one or rescaled it. Jonas Chickering was as brilliant as he was the wildest cutting edge man of his time & man & there's no telling what he would be culpable of. In our shop we have a saying, Jonas what were you thinking? The man obviously didn't get much sleep. Totally driven.!!!!!!! As to recrowning your panel Ric. I also suggest you try figure out what species do wood was used in ribbing & then try to find old supplies of it or recylce this type of material out of old uprights. It's probaly some typpe of pine common on the continent & close to where the piano was made. Know what I mean? Also the way you rib it has Way more to do with the sound than the wood on top. IMO. I'd seriously consider a new more sane bridge root & thus scale ,Maybe not radical ,but his scales, from what I researched were always changing & all over the map. SO what's really original??? Dale ------------ Terry and Calvin Calin has it right Terry. This is going to be as much a historical restoration as I can make it while managing the best playability result as is possible. My plan is to draw the cracked soundboard back together, re-crown the old panel with rib crowning to whatever radius I end up finding out is most likely the origional design, and install a new bridge to match the origional. Rib crowning is my choice here because I want to use the origional panel with its origional markings and decals. I wont bother getting into the old wood argument other then to say that this is an old piano and I want that age to remain intact as much as possible. That said, I fully expect that if I could compare identically rib crowned panels, one with this old panel and another with new wood, that they would sound noticably different. But I'll leave that there. :) / Erwins Pianos Restorations 4721 Parker Rd. Modesto, Ca 95357 209-577-8397 Rebuilt Steinway , Mason &Hamlin Sales www.Erwinspiano.com ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/1c/85/2f/8f/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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