inertia scale

[RobertD429@aol.com]

from Bill Ballard:
>Bob Davis rote, 1/25:
><<One more thing about inertia - no matter how carefully we work, it's
>naturally graduated from bass to treble in all pianos. This means that one
>area is likely to be more of a problem than others. My experience has been
>that the high bass - low tenor gets complaints first. >>
>
>Pray tell, Bob, what is the nature of these complaints? Is it in the touch,
>the tone? If in the tone, what suggested to you that lightening the hammers
>(instead of working with the texture of their striking surfaces) was the
>answer?

Bill,
My intent in the paragraph about graduated inertia was to indicate that
inertia caused problems in the touch, not the tone. Sorry if that wasn't
clear. (Actually, "complaint" is too strong a word). As you know, the fact
that the hammerheads are graduated in weight means that the inertia becomes
greater as we move from from treble to bass on ANY piano, no matter how
carefully set up. It's my feeling that, particularly if we are leaning
towards high-mass hammers for whatever reason (tonal or whatever), the first
place inertia is likely to be noticed is the area I mentioned. Play the same
rapid scale two octaves higher and inertia is low enough for rapid
passagework because of the naturally lighter hammers. At the bottom of the
bass most of the standard repertoire is more likely to have booming octaves
than rapid passages, and the extra hammer weight might be more of an
advantage than a detriment.

If one were to want to selectively reduce inertia in this one area by
lightening hammers, I was suggesting that voicing could pretty much make up
for the change in tone caused by lightening the hammers. Of course, the
gold-plated way is to re-do the balance weight of the keyboard in the same
area as well, but with limited funds available (spelled c-o-l-l-e-g-e), just
filing and voicing this area might produce a more than acceptable tradeoff.

><<Sigh, more of this "judgment" thing.>>
>
>Pass the judgements,please, and Gee, Mom, the gravity sure tastes great on
my
>mashed polemics.

My intention was simply to suggest another possible practical tradeoff I
hadn't seen mentioned.
Bob