Depowering a Piano

[Malinda Dobrins]

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I think I have an answer to your string breaking problem.  All strings have a point at which they will break. The engineers have designed strings to be below the breaking point by 30% or more. Once the energy imparted into the string exceeds this percentage the string usually breaks.  Since we can't control the increased energy put in by the pianist, we can control the breaking point percentage.  The easiest way to do this is to lower the whole piano 100 cents (a half step). The lower tension thus created willl increase the breaking pooint percentage and thus absorb the increased energy before the string breakage occurs. Of course, this can't be done when playing with other instruments unless the players of the other instruments are willing to transpose to the piano and vice versa.

Recently I was in Atlantic City at a cascino where a piano player was playing a Yamaha grand piano.  Playing along with him was a bass fiddler. The piano player was also a pounder.  During a break I asked him if he had string breakage problems. He said no because his tuner was tuning the piano a half step lower and thus solved the problem of string breakage for him.  I assume that the bass fiddler transposed his playing to fit the piano.

Hope this is helpful.  Lee Dobrins
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Farrell 
  To: pianotech@ptg.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 4:39 PM
  Subject: Depowering a Piano


  Yamaha C3, piano bar in nightclub. Serviced every two weeks. Always been a good piano in very good condition. New piano player for last two or three months. The guy is a major pounder. Lots of broken bass strings (maybe 10 in the last two months - never before). The key bushings have also gone from excellent condition to slapping neighboring keys.

  The guy I work for requested that I depower the piano by decreasing blow distance and, correspondingly, key dip. Seems like a good idea. I had not heard of that approach before. Seems to me the piano player will notice it and not like it. But that is just my guess. I reduced dip in the bass by 0.075" - and then blow by about five times that - to about 1.5 inches. (From middle "C" on down, I added 0.025" punchings on the front rail every half-octave until I got to the bass where I added the three punchings to each front key pin - so that there was a transition to the shorter dip.)

  I have seen recommendations for increasing let-off to depower a pounder. I have never tried that though. Just curious whether anyone has any experience with the technique I outlined above, and how much dip/blow reduction is best to adequately depower the piano, but not aggravate the player too much. The amount I used what just a wild guess on my part.

  Terry Farrell

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