Steingraeber factory pictures, bridge agraffes & adjustable vertical hitchpins

[Ric Brekne]

Informative and thoughtful as always Ron.

I will be the first to agree that Dr Andersen nor Stuart has offered any 
empirical evidence to back up the claims stemming from the mathmatical 
models. Nor do I know anything about the conditions for which the 
mathematical model was purchased.  From that perspective I must give 
them the benifit of any doubt and assume the work was sincere and done 
with objectivity.  It is precisely because of other valid observations 
and concerns that I suggest that perhaps the best place to start is with 
the math model used as the basis for all this. Pick it apart both on its 
own ground and from an empirical perspective and see if it holds water.  
Robert Scott shared an interesting perspective in private on Weinreichs 
studies that supports Ron N's statements relative to sustain, tho if I 
remember correctly that was an experiement observing the traditional 
termination/string vibration. We all know at this point that adding mass 
has with all else being equal has the affect of increasing sustain at 
the cost of power. Your casual observations seem to actually deny that 
there is any real change in vibrational direction to begin with. Lots of 
musing, bits and peices... some of it probably very good in terms of 
being an educational guess even.  But if we want to really get at the 
truth.  Then as I said, first find out for certain whether the vertical 
vibration direction actually does increase in duration, and then if it 
does confirm definitively whether or not that state actually does 
increase or decrease sustain.

It would be very interesting to compare the overall sound 
characteristics of the Steingræber vs the Stuart, dont you think ?  
Perhaps Udo decided it was the mass that caused the increase in sustain 
and compensated somewhat otherwise in his soundboard to increase power ? 

I dont pretend to have the answers... but the road to finding them seems 
pretty straightforward.  If I had the resources to proceed I'd be 
delighted to.

Cheers
RicB

 >Strikes me that if folks want answers to these questions then
 >Andersen is a good place to start... followed up by a good deal
 >controlled testing.  Speculation... armchair or otherwise may be fun
 >and perhaps even thought provoking... but it remains speculation.
 >
 >Cheers
 >RicB

Strikes me as smoke and mirrors. Notice that Anderssen built " a
mathematical model". Did he build a real-world model on the bench?
While Anderssen has made certain claims, there is nothing offered by
either Stuart or Anderssen in the way of oscilligrams or other such
results to support their claim. If they had any hard evidence it
would surely have found its way into either brochures or the Stuart
website. But there's nothing, just the claim.

Some time ago, when a Stuart piano was at a Sydney venue that we
service, I did some of my own 'research' with a sophisticated tool
called a trouble lamp. I placed the lamp in close proximity to some
strings on the Stuart piano and played the note to watch the
vibrational mode during the string's decay. As expected, when
initially struck the string vibrated in a vertical mode and as the
tone changed from the initial high-level to the lower-level long
decay, the mode of vibration changed to a circular mode just as it
does on every other piano on the planet. Just think about it. In a
regular piano the offset at the bridge is horizontal while the offset
at the capo is vertical. Making the bridge offset vertical won't
miraculously result in a persistent vertical vibrational mode. In any
event, if it did you would end up with less sustain not more.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the bridge agraffe isn't
beneficial to tone. I certainly suspect that it is, but not in the
way that Anderssen and Stuart claim.

At the launch of the first Stuart pianos in Newcastle, Goeff Pollard
and I spoke with Robert Anderssen, and when asked about the research
which was undertaken, he said that exhaustive tests hadn't been
carried out.

[re the Dain agraffe]
Was interested to read that the agraffe on the Stiengraeber grand was
a Dain invention. It is a very good design, and superior to the
Stuart agraffe, which results in string noise without the silicon
blocks that he uses. Mr Dain has beaten me to the public domain with
this one.

Ron O.
-- 
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
    Grand Piano Manufacturers