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    • LSM Pianos Ltd

      9 Rothersthorpe Avenue
      Rothersthorpe Ind. Estate
      Northampton, Northamptonshire NN4 8JH
      England

      LSM Pianos Ltd. was established back in 1979. We

    • Ben Wheeler Pianos Ltd

      Beach's Crescent
      Little London
      Tadley, Hampshire RG26 5ER
      England

      We are a specialist piano company supplying pianos

    • Richard Lawson Pianos

      Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire
      England

      Richard Lawson Pianos has been involved in the

    • Roberts Pianos (Sevenoaks)

      Unit 17 Chaucer Industrial Park, Watery Lane
      Sevenoaks
      Kemsing, Kent TN15 6PJ
      England

    • Abbey Piano Services Ltd

      Rookery Farm
      Radstock, Somerset BA3 4UL
      England

      Abbey Piano Services is run by a small team of

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    Did You Know Piano Facts

    1350
    Towards the middle of the fourteenth century German wire smiths began drawing wire through steel plates, and this method continued until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Iron, gold, silver, brass, gut, horsehair and recently nylon have been used for strings on many different instruments. The earliest use of steel wire occurred in 1735 in Wales, but is not thought to have been used for the stringing of instruments. The Broadwood piano company stated that they were using steel wire in 1815 from Germany and Britain, but this has not been confirmed. According to the Oxford Companion, it was in 1819 that Brockedon began drawing steel wire through holes in diamonds and rubies. Before 1834 wire for instruments was made either from iron or brass, until Webster of Birmingham introduced steel wire. The firm seems to have been called Webster and Horsfall, but later the best wire is said to have come from Nuremberg and later still from Berlin. Wire has been plated in gold, silver, and platinum to stop rusting and plated wire can still be bought, but polished wire is best. In 1862 Broadwood claimed that a Broadwood grand would take a strain of about 17 tons, with the steel strings taking 150 pounds each. There had been many makers, but it was not until 1883 that the now-famous wire-making firm of Roslau began in West Germany. According to Wolfenden, by 1893 one firm claimed their wire had a breaking strain for gauge 13 of 325 pounds. The same maker gives some earlier dates for the breaking strain of gauge 13: 1867 - 226 pounds; 1873 - 232 pounds; 1876 - 265 pounds; and 1884 - 275 pounds. Wolfenden said:"These samples were, of course, specially drawn for competition and commercial wire of this gauge cannot even now be trusted to reach above 260 pounds."