Re-Notch or No

[BobDavis88@aol.com]

This thread seems to have resolved itself pretty well, but I just have a
couple of comments. How lucky Bill Ballard is to be able to care for two
pianos of the same model in the same room with different kinds of low treble
notching, one standard and the other bias (that is, in line with the bridge
and not parallel to the capo). This should be a great learning experience for
all of us as Bill reports back!

I take care of only four pianos with this type of notching (two S&S D's and
two Baldwin D's), so I definitely don't qualify as an expert, but we have
rebuilt two of the four, and didn't hesitate to copy the old notching design
when recapping, for several reasons. One, they don't sound bad. They are
located in rooms from a large living room to a pretty good-size church, and
even in the church the projection is sufficient if voiced right. I don't know
if it would be enough for a really difficult hall. Although I don't think
there's as much low-partial "punch" on the attack, which punch might
contribute to the sense of a powerful sound in the back of the hall, the
sustain is good. (I'm saying I don't think the sound unloads into the bridge
quite as fast). The sound is colorful (a nice way of saying "trashy"),
because of the mismatched partials, which  _does_  sound good in the back
row, and I don't find them that hard to tune, because the lower partials
aren't that far apart. With a string length difference of, say, 2 mm, you're
talking about less than 1 beat per second at even the fourth partial of A5.
Most of the real "activity" is in the really high shimmery partials.

The second reason is that I consider this a pretty minor historic design
byway, and I am reluctant to destroy this unique, workable variation.
Steinway has made some pretty good pianos, you know, and the more experience
I get, the happier I am in most cases to respect the design and improve the
execution where I can. I wouldn't hesitate to modify something IF IT GOT IT
CLOSER TO THE ORIGINAL INTENT, like change the damper action placement if it
doesn't relate to the keys well; and we'll sometimes do minor re-design like
move the damper tray spring from the end to the middle, but overall, I like
to retain as much as possible of the original if the piano is serving its
function. If it's not, knowing how systems are interrelated, sometimes in
mysterious ways, I'd rather see the owner trade for something else than
diddle too much.

Reason number three is that I think it's delightful to have two very similar
but complementary pianos rather than two identical ones (as if that were
possible, but you know what I mean).

Cheers,
Bob Davis