Piano Strings

These are of steel wire, and are strung across the face of the sounding-board, the strain being for the most part taken by pins at each end. A small portion of the strain is, however, borne by wooden bridges fixed to the sounding-board ; these latter serve to secure an intimate contact between strings and sounding-board.
The pins at each end of the string are kept apart by a strong frame. In the old instruments tliis frame was formed of large timber-baulks, bnt in modern instruments, it almost universally takes the far better form of an iron or steel casting. Such metal frame is better calculated toresist tlie enormous strain created by tie tension of so large a number of strings. The pin at one end of the string is fixed in the steel frame itself ; the other pin is set in a wooden plank (supported by the frame) so that it can be rotated by means of a tuning-key. The string is in this way wound or unwound, and the tuning is effected by the consequent alteration of the string's tension.
The higher octaves of the instrument have three strings tuned in unison for each note, these three strings being simultaneously reached by the same hammer; these strings are short and comparatively thin. The strings are longer and somewhat thicker in gauge the lower the pitch of the notes.

As the lower part of the instrument would require strings of impracticable length, these are instead made slower in vibrational-number by being weighted; copper or other wire being coiled upon them for this purpose. Such more ponderous strings give more sound than the thinner and shorter ones belonging to the higher octaves ; the number of strings for each note is therefore correspondingly reduced in the lower octaves, first to two only, and then, for the lowest octave, or so, to a single string for each note. It may be noticed in passing, that much of the success of an instrument depends on the proper choice of length and thickness of string for each note, or "scaling* 1 as it is termed.