This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment I and many other techs on this list routinely tune pianos stamped A435 up to A440 pitch. Only in rare situations are the strings work hardened to the point where there is not enough elasticity to do this. As for the soundboard/bridge cracks, it is highly likely these could be easily and inexpensively repaired with CA glue. I encouraged you to find a tech comfortable with its use. If you give us your approximate location there is likely a tech on this list who would be willing to do this. Maybe even the 2nd tech you called out could do it if he would take the time to learn from the archives of this list. I would not dump this piano if it has the tone you say it does. Dean Dean May cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN 47802 -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of newdaymoore@bellsouth.net Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 7:43 PM To: Pianotech Subject: Re: A=435 Well I was told by a technician who rebuilds vintage pianos to check inside the piano to see if it is stamped somewhere a435, and it is. He is the one that gave me most of the information about the history of pianos being tuned at a435 in the late 1800's to early 1900's. So I posted to ask if any of you knew about this. In the mean time I went online and checked it out. I found the technician I talked to was correct. Another tech looked at the piano and agreed it was made to be at a435, it is clearly marked in the piano, but with new strings could be brought up to a440 plus needs new treble bridge. Plus he found two hair line cracks in the soundboard. He told me it being so old of a piano isn't worth fulling with. I found other websites talking about the history of pitch. I just typed in the search bar a435 and a bunch of sites came up. I know nothing about orchestras, except what I read online. The piano was bought for a beginner student. Obviously not the best piano for a new student. From what information I have gathered from all of you it will take too much money to fix it up and then who knows what will go next in it. The technician who looked at the piano before it was purchased said it was in very good condition, needed a set of damper felts, set of bridle straps, a hammer replaced, and a new keybed and a tuning. He did the repairs listed and then the tuning. He said it will need 2 tunings a year and it should last another generation. Obviously he was very wrong. Because he was called out the next day because a ringing sound was being heard in one of the keys. He said it had hairline cracks in the treble bridge and wanted to do an Epoxy repair. I posted for the first time on this site to find out about such a repair. I am so glad I did. HE has never done an epoxy repair but wanted to try it for the first time on my piano. After all the advice I got from you all I called and told him no thank you. That is when he told me he knew about the cracks in the soundboard. I guess he forgot he didn't share that with me. That is when I decided to call out another tech to get a second opinion. The second tech told me about the cracks in the soundboard and he saw the a435 pitch marking and he saw the cracks in the treble bridge. So yea, I thought I was doing the right thing having a tech look at it before I bought it. But I guess I didn't pick the right tech. So I have stupid written across my forehead. Thank you all, you have been a great help to me in trying to decide what to do with this piano. The piano is beautiful on the outside but it is 115 years old. Now I am trying to figure out which brand of piano to buy for my daughter. They all cost soo much brand new. I am not brave enough to go with a used one again. After all the stuff I have read I am beginning to think she should just stick with guitar. I got so burned on a used piano. ----- Original Message ----- From: Israel Stein <mailto:custos3@comcast.net> To: pianotech@ptg.org Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 10:52 AM Subject: A=435 At 11:00 AM 11/21/2005, you wrote: I wrote right after that I meant a435. I did a typo in my first email. Sorry. It is written inside the piano on the medal plate beside the Sohmer symbol. This is a piano made back in 1890. I knew to check because a gentleman I called who rebuilds pianos told me to check inside to see if it was written or engraved, "A435" and it was. I did a history search and most composers including Chopin composed songs in a 435 pitch. It was around the time of WW2 that the 440 became universally accepted. Before that 435 was most common but there was other pitches that were accepted as well. www.uk-piano.org/history/pitch.html Check out this website. You might want to do some more thorough research than a web search - and examine the veracity of your sources. For example, the website you cite is no authority - just a fellow who posted some commonly available information who doesn't even claim to for it be complete. It's an interesting collection of factoids - not conclusive evidence. There is very little evidence that any pitch was "most common" at any time before WW-I or maybe even II. One bit of evidence suggests that in the mid 1860's there were 5 different pitch standards in the city of Paris alone - 3 at the 3 different opera houses, one used by the Church and one by the military bands. A-=435 was an unsuccessful attempt to agree on a common "Concert" pitch, and no such agreement was achieved even on the concert stage - never mind in common practice. As to how common A=435 became is open to conjecture. (For that matter, it is rather questionable if A=440 today is very widely accepted on the concert stage - many wind instruments are being manufactured at higher pitches these days, and so pitch in orchestral contexts is being forced upward. We were forced to tune our concert instruments at San Francisco State University at A=441+ so that the wind players could tune to them...). As for your claims about Chopin and "most composers" writing songs in A=435 - I would love to see some of those "songs" Chopin wrote. I'm not aware of any... Most of his output - at least as a mature composer - was for piano solo, where pitch made no difference. And since his favorite pianos were Pleyels, and your source cites Pleyel's pitch in 1836 at A=446 - what gives? Did they drop their pitch just for him? Or did they drop it by 11 CPS sometime before 1849? Does the data even mean anything - did they only use that one pitch, or were they all over the place, and the other tuning forks were never found? See the perils of speculating about pitch in the 19th century? Really, the question of pitch at various times is much more complicated than the oversimplifications you will find on websites. The push for standardizing pitch doesn't really happen until after the development of rail travel (and increased concert touring) all over Europe - 2nd half of the 19th century - and the problems that instrumentalists in various locations had tuning to each other. Even the evidence from surviving tuning forks is suspect - how do we know these were the rule rather than the exception, the common practice rather than the one-time experiment? We don't... And I suspect that piano companies recommending specific pitches were strictly promotional - to show that they are "with it" on the latest trends, not as any result of specific scale or structural design features. Theirs were "seat-of-the-pants" trial-and-error design methods - not precisely calculated engineering... Israel Stein ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/8e/2d/6b/be/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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