echoes in schidmayer upright

[John Delacour]

At 5:57 pm +0100 28/4/02, oren bendor wrote:

| The problem is that
| there is a residual echo in it.  Even when I talk near
| it when the piano is closed it reverberates.  This is
| annoying given the excellent tone.  Whenever I move
| from loud play into pianissimo the echo annoys. The
| restorer maintains that as a matter of design the
| dampers are perhaps too small and too high up so there
| are still live strings although the damping system
| operates as best it can.

Schiedmayers (Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik, not Schiedmayer & Soehne) I
know from this period have an underdamper action with mahogany damper
bodies and fixed heads.  I would expect something like the behaviour you
describe from an overdamper action but not from a piano from Schiedmayer
Pianofortefabrik, which should have similar characteristics to a modern
piano.

The dampers I am talking about have a single block of felt and this should
not be flat but "gesteppt", like stitched but done with glue.  Such felts
have to be specially pressed if the original is to be respected.  If the
bass strings are original they will probably be covered in brass and not in
copper.  The action will also have a sliding set-off if we are talking of
the same sort of piano.

JD