damper problem

[Leif Olsen]

Hello Wim and others.

Why the rightmost string won't stop ringing?

It is normaly said, that the pianopedal works by letting the trichord sound with only two soundmaking strings, but I don't believe this to be so simple.

When one string is broken in a bichord, it is remarkable how little this is noticed by a normaly customer. I used to tell him, that our ear is "logaritmic", and that you should go to half the volume before the normal ear hears a reduction at all.
(If your have replaced two strings of a trichord at the customer and you won't be back for retuning "before Christmas", then he should be well of with a wedge between the two new strings, listening to only
one third of that tone).


Back to Wim's trichord which should be reduced only by a third of its volume and so not a perceptible decrease. 

Moreover I believe it is not reduced that much either, because if you play with a certain energy and then reduce the trichord to a bichord, the hammer must be stopped all the same and in this way must deliver more energy to each of the two strings.

When the pianopedal still has a perceptible effect, I think it is mostly because the (two)strings is struck by a more "fresh" piece of the hammerhead and probably not as "level" as the "normal" striking points.

When the rightmost string won't stop ringing, it could be because this string (with pianopedal) gets most of the impact and so is harder to stop or sounds with more high harmonics due to more severe deformation in the hitting moment.