To the credit of Steinway, they have recently worked on narrowing the amount of variation in key ratios so that their instruments vary within acceptable parameters. Their idea is still to create instruments with varied action quality (personality) so that clients may have more choice of what best suits them. Steinways of a century ago generally have higher key ratios and were designed for very light hammers. I think key ratios have evolved to their lower limit in recent years, and hammer weight has evolved to it's upper limit. We are talking NY Steinway here. Hamburg makes the action with fixed key ratio design. Even with fixed ratio instruments such as the Hamburg Steinway there will be subtle variations in overall action ratios. It's the nature of the beast. Any change in key ratio will change the overall action ratio and this will effect the regulation specs. Generally speaking, the higher the action ratio the shallower the dip and/or the greater the blow to acheive a specific quality of aftertouch. Therefore rigid specs have little meaning. Also, technicians have the choice of knuckles mounted anywhere from 15.5mm to 17.0mm from the hammer center. This too has a great influence on overall action ratio. David C. Stanwood >Antares wrote: >I'm no action geometry guru BUT I did go to Rick Baldassin's and David >Stanwood's classes at the NEECSO PTG Spring Regional in Quebec City, and >one of the*major points* of their classes are that almost all NY Steinways >have the potential for wide variation in their action geometry. My >imperfect recollection is that this is a product of their assembly of the >case, frame and keybed as a unit, and then establishing the action position >to fit within those parameters. [I invite those of you with total recall to
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