Hello to all
A few weeks ago I reported on a project of thinning a very thick 30 year
old Yamaha G-2 Soundboard. (See post below ) FYI a G-2 is 5 ft. 7 inches.
This piano was re strung using Arledge bass wire & mapes Gold plain wire.
The crown was adequate as was bearing.
We used the Ronsen Wurzen felt. The tonal outcome was beyond my
expectations The overall balance clarity, power & tonal response was drastically &
wonderfully different than the original boring & vanilla type sound this piano
has always had. It is a tremendous advantage to have had opportunity to
despise this particular piano for 30 years & because I know it so well the
subjective expereince is greatly dimninished and objective observations become far
more focused. Really cool.
In my shop the acoustic atmosphere is very dry & the tone is very
transparent so it's a challenge to make every thing satisfy my ear in thsi
environment. If it does then the tonal output only improves in the actual
environment. Well.. usually.
This set of Wurzen felt was uncharacteristically soft & the piano required
a failry firm hammer density. SO it wasn't the usual hang em on & it's time
to rock & roll. However I did have the oppurtunity to use Steinway style
type voicing techniques in a Japanese pianos & I tell you the results were
Humbly beautiful & satisfying. It frankly took a lot of juicing but in the end I
could stick needles in the hammers though it was not necessary. It required
several applications to get where I wanted to get tonally & though many of
you despise this technique the tone from this method is hard to duplicate. The
bass has bite & power , & the treble has sustain power & dynamic round tone
that the too thick original board could not hope to produce. The sound floats
out of the piano with a shimmer & hangs in mid air. How's that for
subjective? grin
This piano doesn't sound like any Yamaha I know & the customer who has
owned it's entire life is a fine player. I'd say she was overjoyed & thrilled
to say the least. I truly wish some of you were here to experience this fun
moment in time today.
Life is good
Blessings
Dale
Fellow Belly heads
As time goes by I'm starting to have more opportunity to attempt
improvements on Models of Pianos that IMO need it. My Father Harold, to the right of
me sold Yamaha pianos for 20 years. To me the 5 -7" G-2 for some reason was
quite a boring sounding piano. We are currently giving a fairly inexpensive
face list to a 30 year old G-2. It always had a stingy sound & not a very
interesting tonal envelope. We took it in for a hammer transplant & strings
& in the process discovered some of the reason it is stingy. The 5 ft & 7 "
piano has a .400 thick Sika spruce panel. Not all over but mostly . The
thinnest spot I coud find was >380. The panel has very tight grain as in 25 to
30 grains an inch. It has adequate crown & bearing with compression visible
in the panel & moderate compression ridges in evidence....
SO I decided to diaphramize this tubby little beast to seek improvement. I
drilled small access holes (1.5mm) at the perimeter thru the board in the
curved section under the plate. The nose bolt holes also serve this purpose.
This allows for the wire end of a caliper to protrude thru the holes & the
taking of initial measurements & also to track progess.
I employ a low angle Lie- Nielsen smoothing plane for the bulk of removal
of wood. I'm aiming to get about .340 ish in the middle & about .300 or
less around the tail & behind the bass bridge. The flat side & the belly rail
also were thinned. My goal to create a thinner more flexible dome shaped
panel.
A small bull nose type planes allowed for access in tight places such as
the bass bridge to rim. . Interestingly each plank of the board was laid
out so that it had opposing grain or in other words I had to reverse the
direction of planing to reduce tear out on each panel. The tight hard grain wanted
to really tear out every chance it got. The small plane with approximately
5/8" blade also reduced tear out & surprisingly I did a lot of grain tear
clean up with the small bull nose without further damage.
After thorough & appropriate sanding we sealed with shellac & then
proceeded with Lacquer sealer & gloss top coats folowed a good hand rub out
followed by machine buffing with swirl removers which made it look quite shiny but
& not as glossy looking as polyester. (Nothing wrong with shiny)The
original poly coat was 10 mils thick. The 8 coats of lacquer I bet is 5. Nothing
wrong with 10 mils either IMO
The boom or tap test really went from thuddy & tight near the edges to
vibrant & boom in the middle sounded much more free. Trix is half thru
stringing it and I will report on the final out come in a week or so. I consulted
with Ron O. about floating the bass but because of fiscal restraints passed on
the idea. We are using Jolly loops on the first 10 bass mono chord notes to
set some of backscale free.
All in all we probably spent about 3 ish hours planing & sanding less than
3 ish hours for the rest. No more than 8 hours
It will be an interesting project & beleive it will prove to make the poor
girls intrument far more interesting & she deserves it.
Having fun here
Dale Erwin
Dale Erwin
Dale Erwin--Piano Restorations
4721 Parker Rd.
Modesto, Calif 95357
Shop 209-577-8397
cell 209-985-0990
_http://www.erwinspiano.com/_ (http://www.erwinspiano.com/)
Specializing in the restoration, service & Sales of
Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, & other fine pianos
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