More (ugh) about inertia

[PSLOANE@OCVAXA.CC.OBERLIN.EDU]

To David Stanwood: I don't mean to imply that installing pre '84 shanks will
automatically open the door for poor repetition. Coupled with good lever
ratios in the other action areas, proper friction levels, action parts of
appropriate size and weight, and good regulation (have I left anything out -
oh yeah, a good player), repetition should be no problem. And as far as
key ratio goes, if you'll recall our discussions over the years, I've
been looking at variations there for many years. "Undesirable" key ratios
could precipitate repetition problems with pre '84 shanks, not to mention
touch problems. In case you're wondering, I almost always use post '84
shanks.

To Dennis Johnson --  Great post. I've wondered many times how Steinway
in NY managed to capture the concert stage so completely and for such a
long period of time with an action that used such a "unique" dimension in
such a critical area. Also, their method of "sliding" the stack back and
forth across the keys to accomodate strike point -- and in the process
varying key ration from piano to piano -- was, apparently, not considered
a negative. They felt it gave the pianos more character, one to the other,
in regard to touch. This is information I received from an "old-timer"
at the NY factory. What I personally think happened in '84, was the
realization that it was getting hard to cope with all the "quirky" pro-
blems associated with actions that had varying key ratios and that the
hammer had evolved to become a rather heavy entity. Actions with "bad"
leverage and/or heavy hammers required massive amounts of key leads to
bring them into touch weight specs (heavy touch was not the only "quirky"
problem), and pianos with much to much inertia left the factory all too
often.(I won't get into the other "quirky" problems at this point)

Steinway, therefore, had sufficient motivation to go to a shank that pro-vided better
leverage and did so in "84. And I agree with  you, Dennis, that all this
"stuff" makes for some interesting work for us. However, I caution you all
that there is an old Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting
times!"

Will not be using the network for a while. I have a commitment to some
volunteer work in the City of Oberlin. Environmental stuff. Think Green,
and thanks for all those great posts. Forgot to mention thanks to David
for sharing his interesting and exhaustive research with us. And hey, Yard-
bird, good stuff from NH.Let's do the Colloquium (how spell) in Albuquer-
ke ('nother how spell) 'bout inertia. It's a damn shame we couldn't do
it in "Mass"achusetts. Over and outttttttt.  Ken Sloane, Oberlin