Thanks Paul and John for the information. Lim Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld Powered by Gee! from StarHub -----Original Message----- From: John Delacour <JD at Pianomaker.co.uk> Sender: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 21:23:45 To: <pmc033 at earthlink.net>; <pianotech at ptg.org> Reply-To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Tenor bass strings At 11:18 -0700 11/9/10, Paul McCloud wrote: >I can't tell you what the technical reasons are, but I once attended a >string class at a convention where it was explained. It makes them sound >better with the added mass at the end of the winding. I'll leave the real >explanation to someone else who knows what they are talking about. Lower >inharmonicity? Not sure. I believe the class instructor was Paul Jansen, >Sr. I remember asking how he came to add that feature. His answer was >sort of, it just made sense to do it. I guess that's what goes on in the >mind of a genius. I ain't one. > Or, maybe it's just a way to make sure the end of the wire doesn't >unravel. Roughly speaking, all that. The technique is called "whipping" or "whipping in" and has been used in France and Germany since the year dot. Erard bass strings were whipped at both ends throughout the scale. Blüthner on many models whipped the thinnest 5 or 6 pairs both ends and then went plain. Bechstein, and many other makers, whip all bichords at the bottom end only. Steinway, till at least the 1970s, whipped all the bichords, flattening the copper first and close-whipping under the cover at the bottom end. The reason they stopped was simply because they couldn't be bothered any more, So far as I can tell there is no special virtue in the Steinway style of whipping, though I will do it for certain jobs that need to be very authentic-looking. It takes more time and effort, whereas regular Erard-style whipping is just as quick as leaving the ends plain. I generally whip all bichords on well-scaled grands. For shorter pianos I will whip down to copper size 16 or so and leave the last 4 or 5 bichords plain. I also have special techniques for loading the ends on the singles but generally do this only on larger grands. I will whip both ends down to copper size 6 or 7 copper (0.45mm) and in this case the purpose is to prevent unravelling. After that I whip only the bottom ends. Erard is the only maker that ever whipped the top ends all through and there is probably no virtue in this at all, otherwise other makers in search of excellence would have imitated them. The fact is, surprising to say, that in the early 1800s they had not yet discovered the trick of swaging the steel to hold the copper at each end and instead filed the wire to roughen it. This filing will hold the thinner covers well enough but not the heavier stuff. Whipping was Erard's solution to the problem. Broadwood soldered the ends! Even after swaging became universal, makers continued to whip the bottom ends for tonal reasons. I have never made a comparison using oscilloscopes etc. between plain-ended and whipped covered strings but go simply by the evidence of my ears, and my impression is shared by many, some of whom may even have used an oscilloscope. I'd sum it up by saying that whipping "clarifies" the tone, discouraging stray harmonics and favouring the fundamental. It also gives a cleaner attack and a better decay curve. I have discovered that the loading of the singles, which nobody else does nowadays and very few did in the past, brings the same advantages but I generally limit this to the longer grands. No English maker ever whipped the bass strings so far as I know. I enclose two pictures from my own factory showing first Erard (common) whipping and second Steinway whipping JD (Bass string maker) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100912/faf3afec/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: whipping_12-2-04_03.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 23311 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100912/faf3afec/attachment-0001.jpg> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: steinway_ends.png Type: image/png Size: 37107 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100912/faf3afec/attachment-0001.png>
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