Bass Bridge Position

[David Love]

JD

The reason for the 6 note transition I just outlined in another post so I
won't rehash that.  

I'm not terribly enamored of the low bass on the O and I still find the
tenor/bass transition (as on virtually all Steinways) to be a problem.  In
the low bass I prefer a clear fundamental unmuddied by unwanted strong upper
partials.  The O in its original form does have power though it's a bit too
gnarly for me and lacking a clear fundamental.  While I have been able to
achieve a better sound which scale changes such as reducing the core wire
diameters, the short backscale length and possibly the cantilever seem to
contribute to the lack of clarity and weak fundamental in the low bass.  The
filtering of the low fundamental that the extended cantilever contributes
has been discussed by those with better theoretical knowledge than I have
and at this point my conversion to a straight up bass bridge is based a bit
on faith and my own experience with such changes.  Power is really secondary
for me in this case.  If I can have balance and continuity through the
scale, I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of power.  

Simple changes as you mention can be made to the O to make it acceptable.
In this particular project I was looking for something a bit different.  

David Love
davidlovepianos at comcast.net 
www.davidlovepianos.com

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of John Delacour
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 1:21 PM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: RE: Bass Bridge Position

At 20:01 -0700 9/3/08, David Love wrote:

>My scale experiments suggest that this scale looks a bit better with 
>12 or 13 monochords in the bass instead of 10.  I'd be curious to 
>know how many notes on your transition and what the speaking lengths 
>at the beginning and end were.

If I were doing what you're doing I would take the singles up to note 
13 or possibly, given the reduction in speaking lengths that your 
modification entails, to note 14.  I don't see any point in having 
more than 4 notes in the transition.

I'm curious to know why you think an improvement can be made to the 
performance of the O by such a shortening of the bass bridge lengths. 
Certainly the bass lengths are long for a 5'10" piano and this is 
achieved partly by rather short tail lengths on the bottom notes, but 
I've always thought the performance of the bottom notes on the Model 
O was rather remarkable left just as they are, including the apron, 
with extraordinary shaking power.  You are going to replace this with 
a straight-down bridge and presumably be using double-covered strings 
throughout the singles.  On this piano I would do neither.  If I were 
going to get rid of the apron I would substitute an angled bridge and 
I might well still use single-covered singles.

I consider the O, for all its faults, a pretty well-balanced piano, 
with a bass that, with simple changes to the bass strings (as 
discussed in another thread) has the character I find suitable for 
this piano.

JD