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12
THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 23,
1922
OurTICHNICAL DEPARTMENT
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM BRAID WHITE
ON AN OLD DIFFICULTY IN DESIGN
Difficulties Experienced in the Search for Me-
chanical Means Toward Tone Production
Among the many difficulties which have been
experienced by piano makers in their search for
mechanical means toward the production of
good tone that difficulty which begins with the
first bass string and ends only with the last one
is certainly the most distressing and, on the
whole, perhaps the most acute. In the old days
the strings of the bass section ran along parallel
with the treble and pianos were made either
long or high enough to assure fair length to the
strings at the lower end of the scale. The very
small uprights, on the other hand, which were
popular in Europe fifty and more years ago,
never ran beyond seven straight octaves and
made no special pretensions to power or quality.
When, however, the genius of the Steinways
began to make itself felt in the art, some sixty
years ago, attention was centered upon the
problem of producing powerful pianos, fit to em-
body the ideals of the school of Liszt and of his
successors. The invention of overstringing
dates, indeed, earlier than this epoch, but the
Steinways and the school to which their work
gave rise first made overstringing a standard
feature in the system of construction. To-day
overstringing is accepted as if it had always
been; yet it undoubtedly, as a system, suffers
from defects which need analysis and under-
standing if they are ever to be remedied.
These defects, nevertheless, do not arise from
any defect in the principle of cross-stringing,
but merely in the opportunities for unscientific
and careless work which this system permits.
Those who study the work of such men as
Theodore Steinway, Jonas Chickering, Siegfried
Hansing and the Mehlins know that these men
all recognized the principle of scientific exact-
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ness as not merely applicable, but positively
essential, to any right embodiment of the oppor-
tunities for greater length and power in the
bass, to which the system of cross-stringing
gives rise. In the work of these scientific minds
we see how far it is possible to carry scientific
accuracy, with resulting tonal powers and
beauties which the world has been obliged to
recognize and to crown with applause.
On the other hand, it will not be denied by
any conscientious student that the general run.
of modern pianos suffers from obvious and un-
fortunate lapses from uniformity and beauty in
the regions of the cross-stringing. There is a
bad place which in most pianos has come almost
to be accepted as inevitable. I refer, of course,
to the so-called "break" where the cross-string-
ing begins. Now, it is evident that there may
very likely be always some difficulty, at least
in small grands and small uprights, about get-
ting a good tonal result from the last one or
two strings in the treble immediately adjacent
to the beginning of the overstrung section. Yet
even this difficulty can be overcome. On the
other hand, there is really no excuse for the
defect which is almost universal in ordinary
pianos, namely, for that sudden change in ten-
sion, that hollowness at one end and tubbiness
at the other which characterizes the sounds of
the bass section. It is simply all wrong that a
piano which is beautiful from its upper treble
end down to middle C should suddenly begin
to deteriorate in tonal quality just as the over-
stringing begins, and become steadily worse
until it ends in a mere hollow groan down in
the lowest bass. There is no need for this de-
fect, which, nevertheless, is so common as
almost to be taken for granted.
When one finds a piano of large size and
apparently of great capacity for tone, emitting
sounds which surprise only by their dullness and
feebleness, one may be fairly sure that the
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trouble lies in the mixture of the problem which
has been put before the tone-regulator. Faced
by a bass which is totally at variance with the
rest of the scale the tone-regulator has only
one course open to him. Whatever virtues that
bass may possess (and it probably possesses
some) must be sacrificed. The weakest spot in
the whole scale must be picked out and all the
others by judicious needling brought down to
its level. The result is an uniformity, indeed,
but an uniformity of dullness and almost of
lifelessness. Let any one who is accustomed to
observe, as well as merely to hear, run over
in his mind all the pianos with which he is more
or less intimately acquainted. Let him ask him-
self how many of them stand out from their
fellows for some tonal distinction and beauty.
He will be obliged to consider very carefully
before he can name many, and sometimes he
will have to say that he cannot call to mind
any at all.
The fault is, of course, with the design and
execution of the bass end of the scale. The
bass strings are commonly too heavy, too stiff
and too short. Let not the bass string maker,
however, be blamed for this. He has worked
out from his experience formulae which fit, and
very well, too, the average case. He is not ac-
customed to receive from the manufacturer of
pianos proper instructions as to the weight of
the strings which he is to make. Yet this point
of the weight is the crucial point. In a word,
the bass string problem can only be solved
when the scale draughtsman knows what weight
each of his strings should have in order to pro-
duce a given kind of tone from a given length.
This is not so difficult a problem in the case of
the treble strings, but even there it is seldom
taken up and actually solved. On the con-
trary, empirical knowledge is usually relied on
and although its results are often good they are
more often indifferent or bad. As for the bass
section, it is indeed rather more difficult to de-
termine what the weights should be, but for-
tunately for those of us who are not mathema-
ticians the American Steely & Wire Co. some
years ago published, under the supervision of
Frank E. Morton, valuable tables which make it
a simple matter to determine what core and
covering wire should be used for bass strings of
any length, to obtain a desired weight. Thus
there is no longer any excuse for inexactness,
nor will the bass string maker be displeased to
receive instructions, of which the due execution
will relieve him from further tonal responsi-
bility.
But what should the weight be? This again
is a question which can be solved by the aid
of the A. S. W. tables. The general idea is to
preserve even tension throughout the bass sec-
tion, at a level which should be only a little
higher than that which should prevail through-
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