More CC vs RC questions was RE: Killer Octave & Pitch Raise

[David Love]

OK so let's get to a real world experience.  Forget all the idle
speculation for a moment.  I have a Steinway A, RC&S board, new.  I do
what I always do with rebuilt NY Steinways, I put Steinway hammer on.
The piano is dull.  I add lacquer, normal thing.  The piano gets clangy.
I drive everyone crazy wondering what's going on.  After all kinds of
jumping around I decide to try other hammers.  I try Isaac, too soft.  I
try Abel encores, ouch.  I try Renner blues, more clang, I try Wurzen,
no better, then I try Abel Select and "The hills are alive...".  The
piano comes alive, no clang, beautiful tone, full with nice balance of
partials, my wife decides not to move out afterall.  

So what's that all about.  I've always been able to get a good tone on a
CC board with a lacquered Steinway hammer.  Not on this one.  The tone
with the Abel Select is very good, even "Steinwaylike" (I know, whatever
that is), and the hammer and piano have not yet even developed.  This is
not an advocacy for a particular hammer or an indictment of others.
It's simply the case here that a particular hammer was needed to
produce, in my opinion, the right balance of tone.  We discussed before
about the right hammer for the right board and many people dismissed
that idea--a good hammer will yield good tone.  I'm not so sure.  The
right hammer will yield good tone.  So the observation is that there may
be some differences between a CC board and a RC&S board that creates the
need for a particular hammer for that assembly.  What that is, I'd love
to know.  That way you could design a hammer and then produce a board
that matched it, or vice versa, or course.  Wouldn't that be something?

David Love
davidlovepianos@comcast.net 

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Nossaman
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 9:38 AM
To: Pianotech
Subject: RE: More CC vs RC questions was RE: Killer Octave & Pitch Raise


>Well this is an important point.  Why doesn't compressing the panel
make
>it stiffer?  It seems like it must?

I don't see why it would. Increasing panel compression levels, or making
a 
panel less prone to deformation by compression (dense hard close grain 
wood, laminated panel, or epoxied) will make the assembly stiffer under 
bearing load, but I don't see any reason to assume the panel gets
stiffer 
under compression.


>Even if compression and stiffness
>are not synonymous in this discussion, then the question is does
>compression itself change the physical and acoustical properties of the
>panel?
>
>David Love

Physical properties? Yes, it crushes the cellular structure. Acoustical 
properties?  I don't have any way of ascertaining that one way or
another.

Ron N

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