Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
30
The Music Trade Review
MAY 7, 1927
The Technical and Supply Department—(Continued from page 29)
where they were hitched there was space
enough for the greater number of the strings
to be hitched on to an iron plate cast in the
usual position behind a bearing bar of the same
design as the tuning pin bearing. The longer
bass strings, however, had to be carried down
as nearly as possible to the edge of the pate, and
so were hitched by being carried over the bear-
ing bar, which here was the front edge of the
plate, and hitched to pins cast in this front bar
on its front face and not on its top.
Bars
The reader will have noted that so far I have
said nothing about compression bars. The plate
as so far described consists of an iron bar or
rim bent to the shape of a small grand piano,
and cast in one piece all around. Additional
bars are cast in where needed, at the rear end to
accommodate and fasten the wrest plank anil
near the front edge to form a hitch pin bearing
for the treble strings. The hitch pin bearing
for the bass strings is, as I have said, right
on the main outer rim itself.
Compression bars nevertheless are needed and
are cast in under the soundboard. I used only
two in this scale, for the sides of the casting
are very stiff and the straight pull of all the
strings makes the stress-resistance problem very
simple. The bars are as deep as possible and
therefore quite narrow.
Bridge
It was necessary to provide a rather elabo-
rate extension bridge to give the soundboard a
chance to vibrate freely when set into vibration
by the longer and heavier bass strings. T h e
bridge in a construction of this kind would, of
course, approach extremely close- to the edge of
the wrest plank and b e a r i n g bar and so it was
necessary to m a k e an apron or extension run-
ning t h r o u g h the whole bass and si>nir d s t a n c e
up in (he treble section. This, however, made
no difficulty. Bass and treble bridges are in
one.
It was verv interesting to work out the string
dimensions and loadings, and to find out that
they ran very much the same as they would
have run on a larger piano. Of course tin- bass
in a scale of the size within which the design
had to be limited presented some difficulties, but
the problem yielded to a little m a t h e m a t i c s and
some testing work done on the Richie tester.
Certainly one has to get along without the close
adaptations allowed in easier circumstances, but
at that the results were quite good.
of a really revolutionary nature are needed and
every attempt made towards novel and in-
genious embodiments of the piano principle are
to be welcomed.
I have held pretty constantly to the idea that
there is a limit of size below which a good piano
cannot be made. But constant -work in scale
designing has brought me gradually to see that
if the public taste is going to set in towards ex-
tremely small instruments, we shall have to
make them, and that means that we technical
men shall have to learn to make them tonally
right. The evolution may be slow. It may all
come about very gradually, but surely enough,
if public demand is insistent, the very small
grand and the still smaller upright will be here.
And we technicians shall have to find some way
of designing and building good ones.
Farewell to Intolerance
It is all very well for some one to say that it
cannot be done. At one time I should have been
intolerant enough to say this myself, and some
of my friends may think that I am still in-
tolerant about it. But that is wrong. There is
no sense in being dogmatic about what is
actually going on. The present tendency is to-
wards smaller pianos, and it is difficult to see
how far that tendency may carry us. At any
rate, there are now on the market two four-foot-
six-inch grands, which are selling well, and
another reliable manufacturer is announcing a
four-foot-four-inch grand. An English maker
has built a four-foot-two-inch grand and
shown it this year. There is a German four-
foot-two-inch grand. A Chicago maker is get-
ting out a still smaller one, less than four feet
long, with regular action, not like the Vasey
piano, which is of short compass and has a
special simplified action.
Well, there we are. The question then is,
what shall we do about it? Evidently the thing
for us to do is to get at our drawing boards,
think the problem out again, devise combina-
tions of wire, soundboard and action which w'll
given us reasonably adequate results, and then
work the new data up into suitable instru-
ments. We cannot make the people live again
in large rooms, and it begins to look as if in
time only the wealthy will have big rooms to
live in. That means either small pianos or no
pianos at all. And there is absolutely no way
rm
of getting around it.
•
The Solution
" ? ~^
That is why I say that I am declining any
longer to be dogmatic about the thing. If the
public wants grand pianos shorter than our
present ones, then we shall have to make them,
and do our best. The real solution will be
found, I think, in working away from our tra-
ditional ideas to quantity of tone, and quality
too. It is not at all impossible that the home
piano of the future will have a tone beautiful
inside a room and inaudible from the other side
of a closed door. Along such lines we shall find
our solution. In other words, we shall be fac-
ing a completely new set of conditions and it
will be quite absurd to attempt to obtain-tonal
results like in quantity and quality to those
which we have had under different conditions.
And there is no doubt that the solution can
be found. Certainly I do not think that the
larger piano will ever be superseded. It will be
merely a case of developing the smaller one
because there will be a demand for it. The
larger one will still be the piano which only it
can be. And there will always be a place for
those superb instruments of five feet six inches
up to seven feet in length in which the art of
the piano maker comes to its fullest fruition.
As for the future, I shall certainly not worry,
provided only that our technology is kept up
to the mark and is not afraid to adapt itself to
changing circumstances.
Correspondence
is solicited and should be addressed to William
Braid White, 5149 Agatite avenue, Chicago.
Consult the Universal Want Directory of.
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.
Tuners Carrying Case
LIGHT—COMPACT—SERVICEABLE
Reflections Suggested by the Above
All of which, of course, suggests still further
the question w h e t h e r pianos can be revolution-
ized either in size or in style. My own opinion
is that he will be wise who will keep to the safe
side and m a k e his revolution slowly, by work-
ing along accepted lines and attacking the ques-
tion of improvement from sides which do not
involve too sharp a break with tradition.
I
mean, that is to say, that a tiny piano like the
one I have been describing is, after its fashion,
a piano still, and may have a considerable place
for itself. But a piano which should make a defi-
nite break with accepted ideas as to shape
might have a harder time.
Yet, in spite of all that, i m p r o v e m e n t s even
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