[CAUT] Agraffes and dampers

Paul T Williams pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu
Tue May 15 09:56:13 MDT 2007


Does it come with a musically correct bag of plucking tools and cotton 
gloves?   It sure looks nice and could take care of the sticker issue; 
perhaps we can prepare damper heads this way ourselves, eh?     pw




Andrew Anderson <andrew at andersonmusic.com> 
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05/15/2007 10:04 AM
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You might suggest to the university that they get a piano from Sauter that 
comes "prepared" from the factory.

Check out 
http://www.sauter-pianos.de/english/grand_pianos_classical/omega.html 
and click on the picture link on the lower right.

Andrew Anderson

At 09:09 AM 5/15/2007, you wrote:

Welcome Joe, 

The "prepared piano" as they call it here at UNL is a pain in the 
@$$^$%#.!!  Students not only put stickers on the damper heads, but also 
Sharpie pens and chalk marks, even on the strings, pluck with oiley 
fingers, quarters, paperclips, staples, screwdrivers, and try anything to 
get "the right sound"! This gives you lots of practice removing objects 
from the soundboard and action and keybed!  Unless you're able to teach 
the instructors on removal of foreign "stuffs" and insist they pass the 
info to the students, you're out of luck on them not damaging things. 
Strings and agraffes also get quite a bit of damage as well. Think of it 
as additional job security..... 

Personally, I'd like to put a nice tight hitchpin loop around the neck of 
whoever invented this "music"! 

2.  Your second question sounds similar to capo problems in grands. 
Perhaps, ( and the more experienced CAUT members will add to this) the 
agraffes have a termination point problem, either very sharp or quite 
flat.  It could also be weak string problem or very high tension design 
problem in Petrofs.  I'm not familiar enough on the tension scale of these 
pianos, but you might want to look that up as well. 

Just a couple of thoughts.... 

Best, 

Paul 




Joe Wiencek <jwpiano at earthlink.net> 
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05/15/2007 07:55 AM 
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[CAUT] Agraffes and dampers 




Hello list,
This is my first posting to the CAUT list.  I have two questions
1:  How do you keep dampers free from damage when modern music requires 
playing the strings with fingers and the performers paste the damper 
heads with colored stickers, then remove them and tearing felt, etc. 
This is at NYU, but my own experience in music school tells me it must 
be all over.

2:  A  Petrof P131 upright with agraffes to the top has broken every 
string from E6-E7.  The break is at the edge of the bearing before 
entering the agraffe on the speaking side. Any ideas?
Thanks,

Joe Wiencek
jwpiano at earthlink.net

tel: 551 358 4006

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