Rear Duplex Bars on Steinways:

[Ron Nossaman]

>That's an interesting statement.   I wonder how Steinway would interpret
>that.  In other words, this piano can sound better, but let's leave it
>sounding less good so that it's more like a Steinway.
>
>David Love
>
>
> > How far can a Steinway get its sound
> > improved without sounding like something other than a Steinway?
> > Ed Foote RPT


That's a good question, Ed. Let's find out. But why all this focus on 
Steinway? The one single and most important point that nearly everyone is 
ignoring here is that this stuff is not about Steinway at all. It's about 
improving performance of just about any piano out there, provided there is 
a minimum structure to work with in the first place. How far can a Kimball 
get it's sound improved without sounding like something other than a 
Kimball? Again, let's find out. We're trying to make whatever piano we are 
working with be the best sounding piano it can be by our efforts. This 
stuff works on pianos, not just on Steinways, and has nothing whatsoever to 
do with reverential awe of any monolithic object other than the beauty of 
discovery of some of the science behind what makes a piano work - or not 
work, and the practical application of those principals in making as 
musical a sound as possible come out of any given piano. This is 
fundamental working knowledge, folks, not a smoke and mirrors entrenched 
belief without practical experience or understanding, and there's still a 
whole lot to discover and learn to use in that pursuit. Progress in 
anything requires not only adding to existing knowledge, but leaving behind 
past truths that have proven not to be the benefit they were once thought 
to be. This is difficult for most of us because we have invested a lot of 
blood and sweat into trying to learn to deal with these existing warts, 
even to the point of assigning the least improvable of them the status of 
"character" to relieve ourselves of further responsibility in fixing them. 
But we find we can fix a lot of them by letting them go and replacing them 
with something more mechanically and acoustically workable. This requires 
an open mind and the willingness to evolve as new information becomes 
available. That's the tough part. Focusing on one sacred relic to the 
exclusion of all other conflicting evidence is not a growth attitude.

But that's just what I think.

Ron N