At 08:07 PM 3/7/2011, you wrote:
>That's assuming that you agree that all the changes that happened were
>actually deliberate "design changes".
That's not an assumption that I make...quite the opposite, if you recall.
> I'm more cynical.
No more than anyone else who's been in this industry for very long.
>I think it's often more the law of unintended consequences than a
>conscious decision to change the design.
I agree.
> A change of hammer making protocols or suppliers of felt and
> molding produces a hammer that weighs two or three grams more than
> the original, with a 16 mm knuckle it results in 7 leads in the
> bass or, combined with an inexact plate indexing procedure, sometimes 9 leads.
All of that is possible.
>People complain, eventually they move to 17 mm knuckle, people still
>complain, they start trimming the hammer, the 17 mm knuckle doesn't
>work that well with the old wippen so they modify all the parts and
>voila! A new design of new and improved parts.
...which appears to presuppose that all of this was
unintentional. While I'm not totally convinced either way, I'm
prepared to think that the reality of most of this is someplace in
between some improbable chaos theory of design and something that is
totally planned out to thwart the individual technician.
>Or, apropos to this discussion, some well intentioned individual
>from the outside decides that the original +3 gram hammer was a
>design intention and seeks to modify the action ratio to be able to
>handle it, keep the original 3-2-1-0 leading pattern to control
>inertia and ends up with 1/2 inch key dip--but damn that thing feels light.
Hmmm...I'm not sure this follows. Where does a "3-2-1-0" leading
pattern come from? I'm not sure that you'll find that in production
within any predictable model or date range of manufacture.
> All because the hammer unexpectedly got heavy due to a careless
> manufacturing.
This doesn't necessarily follow from what you note at the beginning
of this paragraph.
>I'm not suggesting that represents any particular factual sequence
>of events but it seems more likely than that each of those was a
>conscious design change.
Yes...which makes my point about a manufacturer reserving to
themselves the right to change specifications whenever they wish
to. That doesn't make any of those decisions objectively right or
wrong. They simply are what they are.
>Of course, since the action ratios do vary quite a bit and different
>pianists of different eras got used to all kinds of things, you
>might have to make a decision as to what to do and in the process
>one pianist somewhere who grew up on 7.0 action ratios and 9 leads
>in the bass might be unhappy.
OK...If I am correctly understanding what you are saying here, there
are two things conflated here which I think adds to the
confusion. It really isn't appropriate to conflate the ideas of
pianists getting used to all kinds of things (they have, no
question), and the idea that there was some period of time (in
earlier, not contemporary) history in which most production had 7.0
action ratios and 9 leads in the bass. There are too many other
factors at work, starting with the older/traditional method of
forefinishing (which included things like "floating" the action prior
to locating the capstan line), and the introduction of what came to
be patented as the "accelerated" action (which certainly did include
a larger number of weights throughout). As I noted this last
weekend, there were many such things which have overlapped in
production over a very long period of time. This is both the
blessing and the burden of the instrument's design...each was highly
unique in a variety of ways which are now judged to be wanting and to
be done away with.
>But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take a chance and make an
>executive decision to put things together in such a way that you
>think is likely to please or at least be pleasantly accepted by the
>great majority. We have to do that all the time and most venues
>only have one piano.
I concur in part and demur in part.
The value of an executive decision depends on the range and domain of
knowledge of the executive and of their ability to choose wisely..in
this case from between an increasingly dizzying array of
possibilities. At some point, as you note, that executive decision
"to put things together in such a way that you think is likely to
please or at least be pleasantly accepted by the great majority" is
going to be judged by the standards assumed/taken up by that same
great majority. Thus, particularly if one has only one instrument in
a given venue, it would seem that a cautious and conservative
approach (i.e., using parts which will produce consistent results)
might be appropriate.
>There comes a time in every similar endeavor when you have to close
>the book, shoot the designer and build the damn thing (and take your chances).
Which, of course, is why the Arthurian Knights, and most of those who
have followed them, were so stunningly successful in the Grail
Quest. From Malory to Monty Python, they consistently appear to fail
to observe that the Grail lies within themselves, and, in doing so,
condemn their quests to failure. In the case of the piano, the grail
that lies within is the tone and response expected/demanded by the
"same great majority" of players; and that, as technicians seeking to
make that grail available to others, we often have to set aside some
treasured viewpoints in order to achieve it. That is, there's a
grail in there for us, too.
Or, looked at least a bit more prosaically, it's probably appropriate
to remember that, after 16 hours (or so) of late Romantic German
excess, the unfolding of Wagner's Ring Cycle comes to a whimpering,
almost phelgmatic (if beautiful) close (in Goetterdaemmerung) with
the Rhinemaidens getting their gold back and going right back to
sitting on their rock and singing just as they were at the beginning
of Das Rheingold, and Albrecht ("remember Albrecht?") returning under
the earth to grumble unhappily to himself.
Or...from still another perspective, if we've already shot the
designer and moved forward, whom do we shoot when our own designs
fail to please?
Best.
Horace
>David Love
>www.davidlovepianos.com
>
>
>
>This raises an interesting point: Since (like all other
>manufacturers of all other products) S&S reserves to itself the right
>to change it's specifications in whatever way, and at whatever time
>they choose. So...following the logic of that logic (if you will),
>it's pretty obvious that (keeping things to actions), the "touch"
>would have changed fairly dramatically over time; and, the more one
>works on instruments from various periods the more one might come to
>this conclusion. And, it might, therefore, follow, that one could
>legitimately use whatever parts are contemporaneously available today
>in order to attempt to recreate whatever that original touch (and
>tone) might have been, and stay within the overall concept of
>retaining the "Steinway-ness" of the instrument. That part is all
>well and good; and, I think, qualifies as A Very Good Thing.
>
>On the other hand, when one chooses to follow that logic, one has to
>be aware that not every pianist is going to feel ecstatic about
>either the sound or the touch. So, another choice one makes in
>following the above logic is the one that consciously accepts that
>one's final product may not be acceptable to one or more
>pianists. If one has multiple performance instruments, that may be
>cool, because, presumably (since one might choose to leave at least
>one with a relatively current "stock" setup) there would be other
>instruments from which to choose, and it wouldn't matter so much if
>one were not deemed satisfactory. However, if one has only one
>performance instrument available in a given space, one might wind up
>with a fairly serious problem.
>
>FWIW, statements like the one Jennie relates can often be traced back
>to the sales pitches developed by the old Piano Travelers'
>Association. While in the context Jennie relates, the brand name is
>Steinway, many of these statements/pitches were developed to be used
>by a Traveler in their day-to-day work, and modified as necessary to
>fit whatever brand happened to be on the truck.
>
>Best.
>
>Horace
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