Salt Lake City, Utah 84115
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The Development of the Iron Plate In Pianos
by Astin-Weight�Piano Makers
The iron plate in a piano is the structure that holds the strings.
The first pianos, made in 1707, had no iron plates to hold the strings.
They only had wooden supports. The total tension on all the strings was
just over 2,000 pounds and the wooden posts in the back of the instrument
did an adequate job of holding the strings with that tension.
Except for one detail:
The wood was subject to climatic change and these pianos were
impossible to keep in tune.
As time went by and piano makers kept trying to improve their produces
it became necessary to find a way to make the instrument more stable. By
this time wire makers had developed the art of wire making to the point
where it was possible to apply more tension to the piano wires. This was
good for the piano's tone: it became more interesting and enjoyable, but
it was bad for its tune. The wooden structure was unable to stand the
increased stress.
Somehow, a way had to be found to make the piano stay in tune better.
A violinist or guitarist bay be satisfied to tune his instrument every
time it is played, but this was an impossible task for a pianist who can
have as many as 220 strings to tune.
About the year 1800, piano makers began experimenting with iron
bracing as a means of making their piano stronger. A piano with an iron
frame would stay in tune much better than one without. But it did
something else. It changed the tone of the piano. Up to this time
pianos had had a more somber sound, not as exciting as a modern piano.
In fact, by our modern standards we would say that the original pianos
were dull and uninteresting.
When piano makers began making pianos with iron plates, the tone of
the piano became more brilliant. They thought it was because of the iron
plate and the idea developed in the industry that iron plates should be
as light as possible so that they wouldn't spoil the tone of the piano.
In the next hundred years, public taste gradually changed. Concert
halls became larger as more people went to symphony concerts and this
meant that pianos had to be made with a more powerful, brilliant sound so
that it could be heard in a large hall full of people.
This would have been impossible if it had not been for the further
development of the iron plate. Some of the plates in concert pianos
weigh about 500 pounds and make a tremendous contribution to the
performances as well as the stability of the piano.
Through all these years of development one archaic idea has stayed
with many piano makers. That is: they still make pianos with wooden
posts in the back for "strength". Now any engineer will tell you that
combining wood and metal to for a structure to be used under stress is
bad structurally. These materials behave entirely differently under
prevailing atmospheric conditions and should not be combined.
One doesn't have to have a degree in engineering to see that if the
iron plates of a piano is made strong enough it will do a much better job
of holding the piano strings than any other material available.
About 45 years ago a European piano designer produced a piano that had
no posts in the back, just an iron plate that went into all four corners
of the piano and was strong enough to take all the stress of the strings,
(40,000 lbs.)
Today many pianos made throughout the world have no posts. They
usually have a better sound. Astin-Weight�
pianos have all been made without posts since 1959. Even our grand
pianos. It's also true that no other piano of this size has ever had a
huge rich sound like our 41" console.
Of course our soundboard construction has a lot to do with that too.
But that's a different story.
