S&S Sound - 2

[N&B Brickman]

Thanks to those of you who responded to my post last weekend on the
quality of Steinway grand and baby-grand pianos.   You seem to agree
that their quality has not been the greatest the last 20 or 30 years,
and I=92m happy to hear the view that it has now bounced back.   I=92d li=
ke
to elicit your comments on why the sound quality in particular suffered
(see my comments below), and if you think that it has now improved along
with the improvements in mechanical aspects.  (I personally feel that
the quality of its sound still needs improvement.)

Why my interest?  I feel that S&S quality is important to all our
careers, and that it is incumbent on us to try to help them improve
their product and thereby help ourselves.  As I mentioned in my last
post, I have customers who want to eventually move up to a Steinway -
they are great pianos.  Which should my customers buy? -- new, or used? =

In my opinion, you have to pick and choose very carefully over either a
new model or used models made in the last 20-30 years.  It would be nice
to go back to the days of uniformly excellent quality.

1) I feel that the Steinway New York hammers need improvement.  Steinway
technicians describe them in meetings I have been to as being of low
density, and therefore needing to be juiced/hardened to build up
adequate power and quality of sound.  As I mentioned in my last post, I
too often find the resulting treble sound to be thin, shallow, tinny,
and/or bright -  with  voicing / tone regulation unable to compensate. =

Perhaps a higher density of felt would help, such as the Hamburg
Steinway hammers (which I use for replacements) which I believe are made
by Renner, alleviating the need for the degree of artificial hardening
done at the factory.  =


2) I think problems with sound quality result from the modern methods
used for installation of the bridges and soundboard.  If a copy of a
Steinway memorandum that I received several years ago from Michael
Yeager, Waterford, Connecticut, is correct, presumably written by Peter
Mohr in 1987 and sent to Bill Davis, Steinway changed its method of
achieving the bridge height and installing the soundboard in 1959.  It
sounds like the old method was far more labor intensive.  A couple parts
of the memo [again, if my copy is accurate] read: "In 1959 this method
was changed to our current method to make the belly operation easier. =

=2E...  By doing this there is no tension build into the soundboard.  Thi=
s
causes loss of bearing and poor tone where its needed most [the
treble].  ..."   And further  "In my opinion this matter is probably the
single most important change that we can make to improve the tone.  The
experiments [conducted in 1979 and 1980] have been completed, results
showed excellent tonal qualities with major improvement. ...".  (Items
in braces are my comments from other parts of the memo.) =


 Norman Brickman