Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Overstrung or straight? Tonal difference?

Do they still make `em straight strung? I liked our old upright. It was LOUD! and clear. Little resonance. But Da told me to turn down . . . considering he bought it . . .!!?

Your thoughts?

99.999999% of pianos made today are cross strung. A very, very small number of builders (Klavins, Paulello, Fandrich) have designed and built, or plan to build, straight strung concert grands.

That is interesting. Now then. Why do they plan to do this? Do they sound different? I`ll have to look into it a bit more . . .

Maybe that's why digitals sound so bad. Overstrung circuits might be an improvement. ;-)

Surely somebody here has had, and liked, a straight strung piano?

I have tuned a few. There was a Lindner grand, which was an interesting piano that Rippen designed. An old Erard, which was lovely in some ways, but impossible to assess in important ways. An old cocked hat piano, again, difficult to assess.

I remember playing on a Bechstein upright straight strung. I was pleasantly surprised.

Although the piano I'm actually building is over-strung—kind of—I do like the flat-strung concept in principle.

Flat-strung pianos lost the great power wars during the late 1800s when the large, powerful over-strung designs came along and took over. But during the transition there were some very nice flat-strung pianos built.

There are inherent advantages and disadvantages to both designs; much of it size-related. Most of the modern pianos—both grands and verticals—built and sold today are relatively short. And in short scales over-stringing does have the advantage of laying things out for longer strings in the low tenor and bass sections. The disadvantage that accompanies these longer scales is that by separating the bass and tenor bridges impedance matching between the two becomes more difficult.

But in longer pianos a modern flat-strung grand piano design could be made to work very nicely. (Just ask anyone who has spent some quality time with one of the large flat-strung Chickering grands that were built from the 1860s on.

I think it would be quite exciting to bring back the flat-strung concept in production pianos but applying modern piano design and construction technologies. At the very least it would offer a viable alternative to the large, powerful (too powerful, in the opinion of many) semi-concert and concert grand sizes.

ddf

Rippen also sold a very similar grand under the Rippen name with slightly upscale casework.

They also made flat-strung verticals well into the 1970s. Interesting pianos visually and mechanically, but they were rather poorly scaled.

ddf

It does seem to me that the longer the (grand) piano, the less benefit accrued by cross stringing. Some of `em go up to 10 feet or so. But the resonance and perhaps therefore the volume, may be advantageous if the bass strings were centrally mounted within the soundboard .. . Having said that, straight strung bass strings would lie along the LH wall of the piano, and would form a sound chamber of their own which could well compensate. And of course, cross resonances would be minimised. . . maybe.

What resonances? We like to talk about how the soundboard “resonates” but soundboard resonances are not necessarily a good thing.

The main drawback to the flat-strung configuration is the placement of the bass bridge. If the strings are laid out more-or-less parallel to each other—and assuming the bass side is perpendicular to the front of the keyboard—then the bass bridge ends up very close to the rim and its motion is restricted by the stiffness of the soundboard panel. Unless, of course, the soundboard panel floats along the side; a technique that was used by several builders to free up the motion of the soundboard system. Another technique was to angle the bass side out some to provide more space between the bass bridge and the rim. A combination of these two actually worked fairly well.

Others tried fanning the string layout making the side-to-side spacing of the strings tighter so that the bass bridge ended up closer to the center of the soundboard. While this worked acoustically it had the drawback of placing the bridge pins very close to each other often leading to early bridge failure.

I don’t understand what is meant by, “straight strung bass strings would lie along the LH wall of the piano, and would form a sound chamber of their own which could well compensate.” Strings do not form sound chambers.

Nor am I sure what is meant by, “cross resonances would be minimized….” Cross-coupling—the transfer of energy from one bridge to the other via common ribs—is certainly minimized (or eliminated). But I’m not sure if this is what you mean.

ddf

I'll add my " two and six pence" worth !
About Thirty years back in Durban S.Africa I bought an 1860 Carl Ecke upright, I'd been looking for one because those I'd heard had a fantastic sound.
Now I took this overdaped and I think stright strung piano inland to Zimbabwe - a place which can be as "dry as heck", there the pin-block dried out so I removed all the pins and had them copper plated.
I write "I think it was straight strung" because I had no trouble refitting the strings !! I can not remember for sure!
Well this piano is now in Perth Australia and I'm in Blighty. I "know" (please note the inverted commas") a great deal more about uprights and the fact that the positioning of the base bridge is a real problem when the instrument is overstrung.

"I don’t understand what is meant by, “straight strung bass strings would lie along the LH wall of the piano, and would form a sound chamber of their own which could well compensate.” Strings do not form sound chambers."

Just a thought of mine. Interaction between string and soundboard or soundchamber in the case of a guitar or violin is what gives it tone and volume. Now, if I place my Digital next to a wardrobe so the LH vertically facing speaker is in the corner, I find I get a far deeper volumous sound than if it was places, say, in the middle of the room . .. .

This would be a function of room acoustics; not one of piano design or construction.

While early fortepianos may have had the bottom of the skeleton structure sealed off, modern pianos do not. They are open both top and bottom. There is no sound, or tone chamber.

ddf

Then what is it that gives it it`s tone and volume?

The tone and volume of piano are due to a complex relationship of the design, workmanship, and materials, especially of the strings, soundboard, action and hammers, as well as the frame that holds them all together. It may further be modified by the room acoustics, and that relationship can be modified by careful voicing.

You know, it's never occurred to me that my square piano has a soundbox and uprights or grand pianos don't. My bad! Any histories of the soundbox out there?

Do you mean generally or specifically? Generally, BDB’s post pretty well covers it.

Specifically, vibrating energy from the strings is coupled to the soundboard via the bridge(s) which causes the soundboard assembly to vibrate. The vibrating soundboard assembly creates sound energy in the surrounding air.

A flatstrung piano could be designed and built that produces essentially the same amount of acoustical power as its overstrung counterpart. There are not, as yet, any modern flatstrung piano—although this may change soon—but there are no fundamental design or technical reasons limiting the power output of flatstrung architecture that are not also found in overstrung architecture. (With the possible exception of the very low bass and I think the jury is still out on that.)

Since the only examples of flatstrung pianos extant are those built during the 1800s, and those generally represent the musical standards and desires of the day, we tend to view them as somehow limited in their acoustical performance. But anyone who has rebuilt a nice old flatstrung Chickering concert grand knows better.

ddf

check out this 1890s Erard piano and the story behind it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q098PYwaZX0

There are commercially made flat strung pianos extant that have been built since the 1800s: Rippen/Lindner and Malmsjo made them, to name a couple. They come and go.