At 5:46 PM +0200 8/23/03, Richard Brekne wrote: >Well Mike.. I am kind of an open-ended and broadly undefined kinda >guy ... :) Be that as it may... I was intentionally broad with this >as I wanted exactly the kind of directionally divisiveness as I >could get... I'm fishing for ideas that may help my own gel a bit >better. I love it! Show a dozen people the same Rorshach test and ask each, "Do you think that prayer in our schools would solve problems like this?" <g> At 5:46 PM +0200 8/23/03, Richard Brekne wrote: >Actually,,, and this applies just as much to the voicing issue Ed >brought up... I'd like to just concentrate on the effect of key >inertia vs top action / hammer inertia plays. So I suppose that >means imposing a kind of neutral status for both friction and the >hammers hardness or softness. Thanks for reminding us that the question concerned only inertia. (Although I'll give thorough thought to anything Ed wants to share.) I have real concerns about the practical basis for your question, however. 1.) If you're really interested in where "excess" inertia would be more objectionable, the key of the top action, the objection would be how each component accelerated. That would imply that it's possible to detect, in an action where inertia makes acceleration increasingly more expensive. which component's acceleration is suffering from inertia. Certainly we have David Stanwood's static tests and guidelines to to answer that question from a technician's standpoint. But show me a pianist who can accurately determine by feel, which component has the excess inertia. I mean, a key of average inertia with a top action of excessive inertia sitting on top of it probably behaves no differently than a high inertia key with a normal top action sitting on it. In the former, the key is ready to accelerate as easily as we'd want, but its motion is is restrained by the sluggish top action load. In the latter, the top action is ready to accelerate as fast as we'd want, but its motion is provided solely by the key underneath it which will always be too slow. 2.) Ric, you make it sound as if the choice we're making is a matter of a trade-off, say between where in a given scenario we'd prefer our inertia, the Lady or the Tiger. (Me, I'd much rather the tiger was overweight and slow to accelerate. <g>). But show me the practical situation where a given action would have these two ways to set itself up, and be otherwise indistinguishable except for the location of the excess inertia. There are two ways to up the inertia of a key, adding weight to one side and adding weight to both sides. The former (normally referred to increasing the FW), if done to excess in an action with a normal Top Action Weight, will quickly render the action unplayable with Up Weights in the 5g range. So in posing this question you must have had in mind adding weight to both sides of the key, which *will* leave BW untouched. But show me the practical situation where there was a normal top action weight sitting on the capstan, and one had reason to increase the weight on both sides of the key, to the point of excess. At 10:16 PM -0700 4/21/03, David Love wrote: >I am reminded, however, of a presentation I saw some years ago by Rich >Baldessin. In short, he had a customer who complained of an action that >was too light. Taking lead out of the keys did not seem to solve the >problem adequately. Anyway, to make a long story short, he found that in >order to satisfy the customer, what was needed was to add two leads, one >behind the balance rail and one in front, equidistant from the center. The >net effect on the balance weight would have been zero, but the, presumably, >increase in inertia was what the pianist was looking for. This is a possible exception, but I'd be willing to bet that if Rick (for whom I have utmost respect), knew how to measure FW and had measured a piano she preferred, he would have discovered that she considered high inertia normal. But a rare exception. (Not knowing of course the BWs, SWs, KRs and SWRs involved.) Ric, now that every has dumped all this stuff into one big heap, we could help pick through it better if you told us what you were thinking when you phrased this question. Bill Ballard RPT NH Chapter, P.T.G. "All God's Children got Rhythm" ...........Ivy Anderson in "A Day at the Races" +++++++++++++++++++++
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