heavy Steinway action

[David Andersen]

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on 6/3/03 5:52 AM, David M. Porritt at dm.porritt@verizon.net wrote:
Wim
But there is.  There's a lot we can do to change it.  There are a lot of
people making some good money taking too heavy Steinway actions and making
them play wonderfully.

On 6/3/2003 at 8:33 AM Wimblees@aol.com wrote:

In other words, with regard to the customer who complained about the heavy
action on a 3 or 4 year old Steinway, the first thing we need to ask is, "Is
this what you bought?" If it is, there isn't much we can do to change it.
                                            Wim


Ah, Wim, my friend-----this has been the dirty little New York Steinway
secret for nearly 50 years.  There were 2 guys out here in California, Keith
Hardesty and to a lesser extent James Bryants, who made a good portion of
their shop income by rebalancing Steinway actions for performance and
recording venues and the personal pianos of serious players.  Hardesty was
doing this in the '60's, '70's, and '80's, long before our boy D. Stanwood
came roaring out of Martha's Vineyard and changed things forever.
Hardesty was changing knuckle positions, capstan lines, custom-cutting
hammers to a specific weight, radically changing the lead distribution
patterns in the front of the key, shimming flange rails up and back, you
name it. He was, by all accounts, a piano genius, shunned by Steinway and
the mainstream of "company" technicians and salespeople. Richard Davenport
and Larry Broadmoore knew him and worked with him;  they have many, many
stories to tell.
Wim, don't be naive, with all due respect.  Steinway has been riding on
their iconic name, making from average to below average to truly horrible
actions for four decades or more.  The wierd paradox, the real
head-scratcher, is what our friend Mr. Brekne said in a post earlier
today----that, in truth, the Hamburg Steinway factory do the best job in the
world at making consistently fine & balanced actions.

This has always seemed, to me, the definition of insanity and laziness, and
hubris, and contempt for the American player.

It would be relatively easy for NY to adopt the Hamburg protocols, or  some
"New York-ized" version of them, but they don't.

Crazy.

BUT---a tremendous opportunity for the action rebuilder to make a bunch of
money working on modern Steinways........

End of rant.

David Andersen 

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