New Player Pianos

[Horace Greeley]

Jon, et al,

Marcel wrote:

>>The piano is too loud for diners in the immediate vicinity. The management
>wants you to fix it so they can turn it down like a stereo, so it's quiet
>enough to be ignored...  something to produce subliminal noise, but that's
>what they are expecting the instrument to do. It won't, of course, being a
>mechanism rather than a speaker, so you may ultimately be forced to retrofit
>a muffler rail rather than cripple the system.
>
>Yamaha Diskclaviers come with a remote control that will control volume as
>well. Whether the low volume will be low enough for the owners, that is
>another quesiton all together.

My (somewhat limited) experience with these leads me to suggest that even
with very careful
regulation, the low volume settings may not be sufficiently inaudible (and,
occassionally, problematic).
Remember that these folks are probably after an affectual creation of
atmosphere, rather
than an effectual production of music.

Giving away how old I am, the solution, with the old pianocorder systems,
was often to voice
the instrument such that the loudest setting on the volume produced about a
good "mf" and
no more.  In most restaurant/bar settings, that will be sufficient.

It also has the added attractive benefit of allowing the mechanism to be
played in
a volume range where problems with regulation will be less noticeable than
they are
at either extreme.

I've done this in preference to the suggested muffler rail, as the muffler
itself introduces
just one more thing that some well-intentioned person can inadvertently
screw up.

Two cents.

Best to all.

Horace


Horace Greeley

Stanford University
email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 415.725.9062
LiNCS help line: 415.725.4627