Pathetic Monster Piano

[David Stanwood]

Dear Terry,

In regards to selling your customer a Precision TouchDesign job (Stanwood 
action work..).  The first thing to do would be to determine the levels of 
this actions touch weight components.  I'm willing to bet, based on what 
you've shared with us is, that the hammers are too light and too hard.  What 
I consider too light for a Concert Hall grand is anything in medium or low 
strike weight zones.  Harder hammers sound better when they are in the High 
zone.

http://www.stanwoodpiano.com/sw-zones.jpg

You mention that this piano might be at perhaps 25% of it's potential. Based 
on the enormous amount of data that my associate technicians send me, I've 
come to the conclusion that most pianos are at some fraction of their output 
due to underweight hammers.

For instance, we just had a brand new Steinway D in our shop and it felt 
fine but the sound was not broad and powerful.  It turned out that the 
Strike Weights were mid medium zone!  So we weighted up the hammers by as 
much as 2.5 grams bringing it to the upper full zone and to a smoothly 
scaled specification.  This made for an incredible improvement to the tone, 
but of course the action became heavy.  So that was solved by moving in the 
capstan line by a specified amount, adding adjustable helper springs to the 
wippens, and individually scale balancing each key to a smooth scaled Front 
Weight, using the patented process. This created an action with balance 
weights in the mid 50's (Down weights in the high 60's).  Finally we hooked 
up the helper springs and adjusted the final balance weight to 35g, classic 
Steinway, by turning the touch regulating screw, ending up with final down 
weights in the high 40's.

Loose bridge pins?  ... Bad news... That needs to be addressed.

David C. Stanwood

>From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
>Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
>To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
>Subject: Pathetic Monster Piano
>Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 22:52:20 -0500
>
>I tuned a Kawai GS-100 today. It is a 9 ft. grand made in 1989. It is at a
>University. It is beat. Key downweight in the 60 to 75 gram range, false
>beats abounding throughout tenor and up, bass sounds like, like, something
>I've never heard before - totally metallic. It was real hard to tune for 
>the
>false beats. The guy who watches over it told me he wanted it tuned because
>several professors from the music department were going to play on it and
>last week they said it could use some tuning.
>
>If music professors are playing this piano, I would imagine there would be
>some interest in having the piano work and sound good. How do you go about
>educating the piano dude to let him know that his piano is operating at
>about 25% and that he could do a Stanwood action job, fix the loose bridge
>pins, restring the piano for perhaps $6000 and likely have a very nice
>piano? This would be reletively easy for me if the piano were 80 years old.
>But on an 11 year old piano? But there it is, in all its sub-mediocrity.
>
>I hate the idea of one of these professors even knowing that I touched the
>piano because anyone that knows what a nice piano is like would be 
>horrified
>by this thing (IMHO). What on earth happens to these pianos in just 11
>years. Before I looked up the age, I guess the piano was about 25 years 
>old.
>
>Terry Farrell
>Piano Tuning & Service
>Tampa, Florida
>mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
>

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