Even balance weight or even something else, that'sthequestion.

[Richard Brekne]

Phillip Ford wrote:

> >Hi there David
> >
> >Agreed with your below........
>
> >Those that assert that the dynamics of the action are not addressed by all of
> >this seem to overlook that both mass, friction and ratio taken thus are quite
> >central players in the dynamic perspective. Certainly the eveness created in
> >using a system such as PTD will be refected in that view.
> >
> >Cheers
> >
> >RicB
>
> I think you would get an even inertia curve from this system to the extent that the inertias of all the keys are equal (in other words their dimensions are uniformly the same and the materials from which they are made are uniform) and that the leading is done with the idea of keeping the inertia curve smooth.  One way to do this would be to place the leads in all the keys at the same spot but vary their weights.  I'm not aware that anyone does this.

That is essentially what David Stanwood does. If you look again at his last postings I think you will find he states that he distributes his leads for each key evenly about the halfway mark from the front of the key to the balance rail pin.


> I believe people are using leads of a few fixed weights and locating combinations of them around on the key to get the front weight to match a curve.  If you're not careful about this you could have two adjacent keys that have almost identical front weights but very different inertias.  Whether this change in inertia is enough to affect the pianists perception of evenness I can't say, but it seems possible.
>
> Phil F

I aggree, and it even gets much worse when leading is done purely from a DW perspective. This is one of the things that suprising me when I hear arguements against PTD that go along the lines of "overkill".  There is no formal study that shows that pianists can sense eveness of inertia or not, but I am in no doubt as to their ability to do so. Even putting FW's on an even curve always brings comments from Pianists along these lines. I have yet to see an exception. Stanwoods empircal data base on the subject matter also points very strongly in this direction, tho I can not speak to how objective that base is.

At what point differences of inertia at equal FW's becomes significant tho..... thats a question yet to be answered, and a good one me thinks. That goes for the "how much is too much" and "how little is too little" questions as well.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html