Killer Octave Occurrence in New Pianos

[Piannaman@aol.com]

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In a message dated 7/9/03 1:50:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes:


> I have a question for techs that work on new pianos: What is the incidence 
> of an identifiable Killer Octave area on a new piano? Let's say the threshold 
> for its existence will be with voicing efforts - when you need to "voice the 
> piano down" to blend the weak area (the Killer Octave) into the rest of the 
> keyboard. Feel free to identify fallboard names (or not).
> 
> And yes, I have an ulterior motive - it has to do with a past technical 
> presentation at a PTG chapter meeting.

Terry,

Sorry it's taken so long to respond to this.  I've been on 3 year-old 
boy-overload lately!  I'm not sure if my information will help at all, because it 
really hasn't much to do with voicing.  The problems I have in the killer octave 
in new pianos are related to tuning stability rather than tone(give them a 
couple of years, and the tonal weakness becomes more evident).

Whether or not I do a pitch adjustment on a new piano(primarily of Asian 
origin, write me back offline and if you really want names), I ALWAYS go through 
that section twice. As per an e-mail exchange not long ago with Ron N., I have 
watched one spike/string in the tunelab graph drop radically as I pull a 
neigboring string up to pitch.  While this instability is evident throughout most 
of the piano, it is markedly greater in the KO section.  I whack these notes 
pretty  hard before even putting a hammer to the pins.  

I realize this isn't what you were asking for, but I hope it helps a little.

Dave Stahl

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