Steinway B tenor conversion report

[Ron Nossaman]

> Keeping with this approach of utilizing the original long bridge and 
> bass bridge, let's say in a case where the piano will be restrung - or 
> at least the bass will be restrung, is there a potential for further 
> improvement if you were to rescale the bass. What I am asking is did you 
> have to go through scaling contortions to rescale those four notes 
> compared to if you were rescaling the four notes PLUS the entire bass 
> section?

The thing that didn't fit well just doing the low tenor was 
the inharmonicity. It's lower than both the high bass, and the 
last plain wire in the low tenor. Rescaling the bass would 
have improved the bass, for sure, and might have connected the 
inharmonicity between low tenor and bass a bit better without 
trashing the tension and Z, but the big difference between the 
wrapped and plain strings on the tenor bridge wouldn't go away 
without shortening the wrapped strings speaking length.



> Of course, best improvement is complete new scale, new bridges, moved 
> bridges and a transition bridge.

Right.


> I've done something similar to what you have done, only on smaller 
> pianos will very good results (and of course, smaller pianos with BIGGER 
> transition problems have the potential for more improvement!). 

I did a Yamaha GH1 like this, replacing just the few low tenor 
notes with wrapped bichords. It helped.


>But each 
> time I have done that I have also had the entire piano rescaled 
> (including the bass). I just wondered how much utilization of the 
> original bass scale might restrict your scale design work on those four 
> low tenor notes.

It depends on how bad the mismatch is at the bass/tenor break 
originally - which parameters are affected, and in which 
direction.
Ron N