Ed Thanks,, that opens up Pandoras box of piano philosophy, Aye? Personally I like Baskin and Robbins because they have many flavors. So to should students have tonal flavors to experience and train there ears. Dennis and I did an install at a college where there were some of the usual brands purchased, but the ones I liked the best was an Asian piano that had very workable hammers and a very good scale. They sang so well. There was nothing short and choppy about the sound and with the hammers being so user friendly the tone was not going to deteriorate any time soon. It was a 48 inch upright. I can't recall the name at this moment. Maybe later. .... but another one I like is the Kemble built in England. A very sweet piano. I think there are probably many different varietys to choose from. As a side note: FWIW.... I think hard pressed hammers should be banned from practice room pianos. They are too expensive to maintain... so they aren't..... and then the students are hearing a sound similar to shattering glass and risk damaging their ears and concept of tone. Ray and I routinely sell large groups of Ronsen hammers to institutions to solve this issue in practice room pianos. I know that the pianos Frank Emerson is working on are also modifying there hammer making techniques to something less densified. The pendulum swings. Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com Custom restoration Ronsen Piano hammers Join the Weickert felt Revolution 209-577-8397 209-985-0990 Another consideration is whether it is in the best interest of the students to have only one brand of piano. I personally think that the "All Brand" concept is a dumb thing for a school to buy into. It is not a single brand world out there, and students need to come out of school with as broad an experience as possible. Regards, Ed Foote RPT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110121/046687f2/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC