•Piano voicing is a very subjective art, but there are "absolutes" in it as well. A "Brittle" sounding piano is very easy to define really. Whenever a hammer is adding it's own striking sounds that are not entirely from the string, then that piano sound becomes "Brittle," and finally, "Tinny." What ...

•Regarding tuning, I have seen two pianos without pin blocks. One was a Mason and Hamlin grand, and the other was an upright. Instead of a pinblock, the strings terminated at a turnbuckle of sorts. The string looped through a hole in a screw. The screw itself was passed through a projection in the i...

•The Hupfeld Pan Orchestra, Philipps Paganini orchestrion and certain other orchestrions were designed to imitate the playing of a real salon orchestra as closely as possible. The smallest salon orchestras include a small string ensemble with piano accompaniment. Somewhat larger salon orchestras add...

•A useful old utility from the world of MS-DOS about 10 years ago is SNOOPER.EXE 10402 bytes 1-26-89 I run it against an unknown executable and it returns all the ASCII strings it finds. I have not seen a comparable utility in recent years. I run it from the DOS prompt with the following command str...

•Bruce Clark was worried about overly tight pins. This can sometimes happen, particularly when a new pin plank is drilled and then left for a month or two before stringing. Another problem can be drilling with an undersized drill bit. The danger can be to twist off the pins themselves. They will bre...

•Hello MMD readers, Recently, in this newsletter, there has been a string of postings about George Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique" -- texts concerning recent presentations, the instruments used (beyond the original pianola concept) and also mine concerning the reconstruction of an entirely new version ...

•Hello MMDers, Some of you might be interested to know that we are designing and building an automatic guitar. This device is based on a six-string electric guitar but it uses stepper motors to change the "finger position" for individual strings and to raise and lower individual picks. Picking is ac...

•Greetings: When confronted with upright pianos with pinblock laminations opening up, I have installed through-bolts that are probably similar to what John Tuttle describes in his posting. My approach has always been to lower the string tension a _lot_ (coils loose on the pins) throughout the piano...

•"Tremolo," as defined in professional music dictionaries including "The Harvard Dictionary of Music" by Willi Apel, is the rapid reiteration (or repetition) of the same tone, produced by rapidly reversing the bow on stringed instruments. "Vibrato" is the fluctuation of pitch. Apel admits that while...

•Regarding tremolo and vibrato technical discussions, I think we will probably find that everybody is right about it. Whether a violinist is undulating the pitch with his finger on the string, or a pipe organ is Tremming the melody, I can't imagine vibrato without tremolo and vice versa. It all seem...

•Still more? What? It hasn't all been said on the topic! No, I add to the complication of terms. Stringed instrument players, balalaika players in particular, use two types: If one presses downward on the bridge, the tension is lowered, and the note drops in frequency, but then only returns to norma...

•Hello, I have been lurking on the list for some time now. My original post regarding the Microtonal Carillon (nearly complete) I am building is found in MMD 990721. My next project will be a solenoid driven miniature piano (25 to 50 strings) with moveable bridges to allow for flexible tuning. Could...

•Happy New Year to All. I am preparing to remove the plate from a Chickering grand (first time for me). The downbearing is positive across both bridges. I will take detailed downbearing measurements before and after reducing the string tension. But I have two questions that have caused me pause: 1. ...

•Hello in there year 2000, I saw a comment in today's MMD that concerned me. In it, someone described the most common type of mandolin rail as being hard on the strings. It said that when the rail drops, the metal pieces are in a position where they can be struck by the hammer and driven against the...

•Piano plates can crack for different reasons. One typical scenario is failing of the pin block glue joint: the string tension pulls the pin block forward, and 'voila'! I own and fixed such a piano; it has been fine for 15 years. Every plate crack needs to be individually evaluated. Some are benign...

•Hi. I have five similar instruments. One Christmas I was given one, with a box of replacement strings to fix it. I got a second one because I used minor-key tuning on one. I used to play them, before I got into the balalaika. I set mine on a table, and played the 4 chord strings with a thumb pick, ...

•Name: "Hawaiian Tremoloa", original price: $35 Maker: Manufacturers Advertising Company, 93 Ferry St., Jersey City, N.J. Number of chords: 4 (D,F,G,C) Number of chord strings: 4 per chord Number of solo strings: 1; 2 octaves playable by means of a steel slide. I just found the original guarantee ce...

•Hello MMD's, I have a Customer who wants purple felt to be seen on the gold plate of his Duo-Art Grands. Does anybody know where a source of purple understring felt and purple string braid might be? Thanks much. Bing Gibbs Player Piano Forte Cupertino, CA USA binggib@pacbell.net.geentroep [ drop .g...

•The 1925 Gulbransen was designed to be tuned at A-440. Since the pitch has dropped that much, I would suggest that you "chip" the strings, just as in raising the pitch of a newly strung piano. First, I would inspect the soundboard for problems. If it has any, I would remove the strings and restring...

•In my very humble opinion Wurlitzer rolls make a Wurlitzer band organ sound like just what it is. I think the Wurlitzer band organs, especially the one that play style 150 rolls are in the same musical category as bagpipes, or 5 string banjos. They are very limited musically because of their big 3 ...