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

[Ron Nossaman]

>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.

You had a D with, I think, a beefed up and crowned rib set with few 
modifications?? How extensively was this A modified?


>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.

I've run into this too, which is why I've been saying that the hammer 
choice depends a lot on the soundboard. I'm not entirely sure what's going 
on here. The evolution of the technology isn't anywhere near complete, and 
there are still plenty of things to learn. The resilience of the hammer 
seems to be very important in these boards, and the harder hammers don't 
work at all well.


>What that is, I'd love
>to know.

Me too. I have some ideas, but haven't done enough of these boards to be 
sure. I'd like to be able to make them somewhat more tolerant of different 
hammer characteristics without losing what I like about them in sound 
quality, response, and dependability.


>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

That would indeed be something. Some control is already possible. Boards 
can be built favoring power, favoring sustain, or somewhere in the middle, 
as well as the enhanced stiffness control in different areas. We're making 
progress, I think, but we don't have all the answers.

Ron N