Not enough dampers

[John Delacour]

At 8:14 PM -0500 12/4/01, Phil Ryan wrote:

>...What is the criteria for cutoff of dampers in the treble?  Can 
>anything be done to mute this objectional ringing?

Just more dampers.  The most I have come across are 73 on a Steinway 
Vertgrand but my own 1905 Lipp upright has 72.  I've just taken in 
another Lipp of 1912, identical in structure but with a Fritz & Mayer 
action instead of a Keller.  This has only 68, and  that even number 
is found on only a few good makes, the norm on most commercial pianos 
being 65 in Europe through most of the century.

When I was a child we had a Bechstein 8 upright in the north and a 
5'9" Lipp grand in the south.  I can remember not liking the ringing 
on of the Bechstein, though I had no idea what caused it and just put 
it down to the fact it was an upright.

The obvious answer would be to say they were all just cutting costs, 
but I think probably there's a compromise between the disconcerting 
break at the top and the contribution these undamped strings can make 
to the overall bite of the tone.  I don't know and have never 
analysed the question.  A colleague along the road was moaning to me 
a few weeks ago that he'd been forced to extend the dampers on a 
piano to get a sale, but its very rare for a customer to get that 
fussy.  All the same, I think Wolfenden recommends 72 dampers and 
that's what he will have put on the English Orchesrelle/Aeolian 
Weber, which was a very nice piano when he had a hand in it and all 
too rare.

JD