Rear Duplex Bars on Steinways:

[Richard Brekne]

Ron Nossaman wrote:

> >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.

The only problem is that "what sounds best" is simply not quantifiable in the
sense you want it to be.  "What sounds best" is what anyone likes at any given
time. Its so friggen relative that its amazing. We find people absolutely in
love with a 230 year old clavichord and find appallingly disgusting the sound
of the modern piano. And in-between these two obviously overstated extremes
there is all that mired mesh of individual tastes and preference, rational or
not or both. Instruments made by Steinway, Knabe, Bechstein, Whomever are done
as they are done on purpose... because the people responsible for their
creation LIKE what they do and how they do it and what results. ( I look aside
from the machine stamped instruments here).  Its just too simple to just cast
aside all this and claim that  some new principal here, or some understanding
of knowledge there dictates that all pianos can and should benefit by being
changed to conform. To begin with, not everyone will agree, and that doesn't
mean they are a bunch of neanderthals dancing around the proverbial fire
throwing red ochre into it shouting the name of some piano god.



> 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.

And believe me Ron, Del, and all of like mind... I admire the effort far more
then you probably will ever give me credit for. Its just that I have a very
hard time understanding why on earth with all that blood sweat and tears, with
all that accumulated knowledge, with all that gathered, honed and refined skill
and the willpower to keep on with it all, that you find your own name not worth
finding its well earned place on any such instrument so redesigned. I have no
doubt in my mind that when you are done with your absolute best
redesign/rebuild, that piano has far more Ron Nossaman in it then whatever the
original manufacturer intended.

To put a point on it, there is a major difference between more precisely tuning
a duplex scale and saying... "hey the duplex is a bad idea... lets do something
else."


> Ron N
> _______________________________________________

But that's just my different view :)

Cheers

RicB

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html
http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html