Key Leads and Inertia

[David C. Stanwood]

>Complementing these present choices are the generations of pianists 
>who have trained on the conventional action, and who might not know 
>how to handle an action with radically different inertia and friction 
>could we come up with it.
>
>Bill Ballard RPT

Last winter at the California Convention in San Ramon, we displayed a
Steinway A3 Ebony plain case with original board, combining SMBA and PTD.
(Simplified Magnetically Balanced Action and Precision TouchDesign).  It
had no keyleads except for the top section which had some back leads, a 1/2
high Strike Weight and a 5.3 Strike Weight Ratio level, 10mm dip/44.5mm
blow, Down Weight 51g bass to 46g treble, and Friction was upper Low zone
13g bass to 8g treble.  The piano was a hit except for Don Mannino who
played it for a while and asked... "Alright, what did you do....?"  When we
replied "Magnets" he said. "Now I get it... This would be great for a lot
of pianists but not for me..."  He likes the feeling of mass in the
keystick.  Personally I think it would have felt better with a little more
friction in the hammer flanges bringing F up to 15g bass to 11g treble.
The piano sold soon after for $65k so someone liked it enough to shell out
so many clams.  The repetition in the pianos we've done with magnets seems
to be a lot more solid and sure fired.  They certainly are "different"...
in a good way for a significant percentage of pianists.  Pianists are
pretty adaptable.. (They have to be!)

Another example... when we were asked to make Keith Jarrett's action very
light without sacrificing hammer weight we use wippen support springs to
get the keylead level down...  He loved the action in his weak physical
state.  (He had been very sick and unable to play for quite some time.)  He
commented that what we had done was to reduce what he called "Break away".
He really liked it!  He recorded a very succesful CD with this set up (A
Melody at Night with You).  When he got healthier he complained that he
couldn't control the action and wanted to get rid of the piano.... He
needed to feel some breakaway....!  We simply added more keyleads, in the
outer position near the front of the key, and backed off the support
springs so they were hardly working..  He's  happy and still recording with
this piano... a Hamburg C cMid70's.

David Stanwood