High(!) touchweight LONG

[Horace Greeley]

Del,

At 10:29 PM 9/21/1998 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>Horace Greeley wrote:
>
>> . . . .  (major snipping taking place)
>>
>>
>> ... the "optimum" piano size landed in the roughly
>> 9 foot range.  A piano of this size requires a hammer of a certain mass in
>> order to be able meet those requirements.  A hammer that is too massive
>> (and/or, too hard) will overdrive the tone-production/transduction system
>> (strings, bridges, soundboard, etc.) of the instrument and produce the
>> splatty, attack-heavy, thin kind of non-carrying tone which everyone loves
>> to hate.  A piano that has insufficient mass (and/or is too hard), will
>> produce much the same result, on a smaller, and, therefore, sometimes less
>> egregiously annoying level.
>
>Well, not necessarily.  Hammer mass and hammer density are not really the
same
>thing.  Hammers can be large, yet not very dense and/or massive.  They can
also be
>relatively small, yet be very dense and/or massive.  As well, simply making a
>hammer more massive does not mean that more energy will be imparted into the
>string.  With all action and hammer combinations there will come a point
of energy
>transfer saturation.  Once this point is reached, adding more mass to the
hammer
>will not result in more energy being transferred to the string, it will
simply
>introduce increasing levels of distortion (for lack of a better term).

Well, that is the problem with trying to get too much into too small a space,
too much has to be cut way too short.


In re: parts mass:

>This is also quite true.  Once again, the little tool I described was used
with
>new actions, mostly during the years from the 70's through the mid 80's.
>Replacing action parts such as hammers, hammershanks and wippens was not an
>option.  Well, it was, but the only viable replacements at the time were
either
>identical to those already in the piano or, in the case of the incredibly
dense
>and massive imported hammers available at the time, far worse.  This was/is
>presented simply as a method of fairly easily optimizing the geometry of an
>existing action, installed in a specific position on a given keyframe and
using an
>existing set of parts.  Our procedure of choice nowadays is to replace the
action

>components with parts that fit and work.  I still use that little devise
from time
>to time, though not with the regularity that I once did.  It is more of a
>diagnostic tool now.

I like the use of tools like this a good deal.  Things like this, along
with the
"Lowell" gauge, etc., can provide most valuable reductive insight into a
given 
action.  

Sorry again for the length of the previous post.

Best.

Horace


Horace Greeley, CNA, MCP, RPT
Systems Analyst/Engineer
Controller's Office
Stanford University
email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 650.725.9062
fax: 650.725.8014