Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:32:21 -0800 From: Horace Greeley <hgreeley at sonic.net> wrote: >Hi, Alan, >At 10:14 AM 11/29/2010, you wrote: >>One issue I have with teflon bushings is the high resistance to >>movement at the beginning of the stroke, and then when that >>resistance is overcome, the part moves with very little friction >>resistance. Maybe I'm just making a problem out of nothing, but it >>seems that it is therefore harder to control, from a pianist's >>perspective. If so, the artistic perspective trumps, IMHO. >> >>Comments? >...of course!... >For me, too, this has always been the area of primary concern. That >said, so much has to do with the technique of the individual artist >that it seems difficult (perhaps even pointless) to predict who >may/may not notice, let alone get hung up on/by that initial >friction. (I do want to be clear that this difficulty is not an >excuse for not doing whatever can be reasonably done.) Horace, Alan and all, I don't know if this anecdote sheds any light on the issue or not, but I remember back when I was working at Steinert's in Boston in the early 90's, (that's the Boston area Steinway dealer - and the location of Steinway's Boston-area Concert Stock pianos) Rudolph Serkin retired, and sent his Steinway C & A pianos ( 3 "D"s and 1 "M") back to Steinway - they were assigned to us. (He used one "D" for touring, one for studio recording and one at "Music at Marlboro" - and the "M" at home). They were all teflon bushed - except for one of the "D"s which was a real puzzle - Serkin's technician (his son John) replaced about half the hammers and shanks in the piano (the top ones) and left the rest in place. So the bottom shanks were the original teflon-bushed ones, the top shanks were newer (post-teflon "Permafree II" shanks), and because Steinway had also moved the knuckle location since the earlier shanks were made, the top notes also had a different style wippen on them. I am not going to repeat all the theories we (the house technicians - four of us at the time, plus several "consultants" who came by out of sheer curiosity) hatched about why Rudolph had John do this to the piano (which we dubbed "Gemini" for obvious reasons) - but it appears that having both types of bushings in the same piano didn't seem to bother Rudolph any... (But then, neither did the presence of two different action geometries...) I did try to pick John Serkin's brain about it (and some other things I found in those pianos) a few years later, when both of us were subscribed to the old "Pianotech" e-mail list (before it split up into the current several lists) but he did not respond... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20101129/70a8209d/attachment.htm>
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