Rear Duplex Bars on Steinways:

[Richard Brekne]

David Love wrote:

> The fact is that optimizing performance was clearly not always the goal of
> every designer/engineer.  Often performance had to be balanced with the
> economics of manufacturing and many of the designs that we are dealing with
> from 100 years ago do not benefit from more recent developments.  To
> duplicate designs that were made for reasons other than performance and
> that do not take advantage of advances in information and design seems,
> well to use a risky word, silly.

While it is very true that cost effectiveness has always, and always will play
an important roll in manufacturing, I dont really see how that figures into the
equation we are dealing with. Number one, those same cost effectiveness issues
are present today, and number two.... some of these new design principles have
been shown  to be more cost effective to begin with. That some factories choose
to look away from that fact kind of undermines the whole reasoning here. And
besides... all this simply ignores the real probability that many manufactures
produce what they produce very conciously... because they like what they create.
And again I reference here the most sincerely dedicated piano makers through
history. To simply disregard or refuse to recognize the significance of this is
not something I am prepared to do. If you wish to wash all these issues aside,
and simply define their intents and purposes in such a way that allows you to
call place them in a box you lable "silly".... well by all means... do so.

>
> David Love
> davidlovepianos@earthlink.net
>
>

--
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