Has anybody checked out the article by Harold Conklin in the June issue of <Journal of Acoustical Society of America>? The title is "Design and Tone in the mechanoacoustic piano..Part 1. Piano hammers and tonal effects" It details the effect of hammer weight on the tonal spectrum of a note. Conklin shows two traces of the note G6, one had a normal weight and the other had a 4.6 gram weight added to the hammer. Some type of device was used to provide an equal key velocity with both cases. This means that the heavier weight actually provided a blow from the hammer with a slightly greater hammer velocity. The heavier hammer sounded "choked off". It is well worth reading. Harold Conklin is a soft spoken genius of the piano that many are not acquainted with in our field. He probably holds more piano patents then any single person in the history of the piano. At last count it was twenty. Stanwood... how about this: H. A. Conklin and P. W. van Nuis, U.S. Patent No. 4,381,691, "Touch Force Adjustment means for a Piano" (3 May 1983). Conklin's patents are extremely well written. They are very informative, undeceptive, and read like textbook engineering at its best. Michael Wathen
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