If the action rail flexes, can this movement be felt by the player's hands, or only sensed aurally? Laurence ----- Original Message ----- From: Ed Sutton To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 10:26 AM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Action saturation Incidentally, if there is a problem with the Steinway action rail flexing, it will probably be more obvious (weaker sound) in the middle of the rail section, with the least flexing at the section ends (stronger sound). es ----- Original Message ----- From: A440A at aol.com To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 8:53 AM Subject: [CAUT] Action saturation Ed Sutton writes: Action saturation. As the pianist plays harder, the action parts flex more, so that eventually the force delivered to the string is determined by the whipping movement of the parts rather than the speed of the stroke to the key. The acceleration of the hammer has reached its peak. The pianist plays harder, but the only sound that gets louder is the thump to the keybed. There is a great example of this in the "Five Lectures" series. By comparing timing of the action components during varied levels of force, it becomes apparent that at some point, the key is hitting the punching well beore the hammer has finished its acceleration. Taken to an extreme, it is possible to bottom the key out before the hammer moves much at all. Which means that the force hitting the string is limited to whatever compliance is found in the action. I think the key is responsible for most of this, though the hammershank would run it a close second. The balance rail punching, capstan felt, and knuckle compression would come in third, with the small amount by rail flex and pin bushings contributing a little more. Regards,. Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100728/2cbd2958/attachment.htm>
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