I agree with the assesement of the muffler rail concept. However there's another issue going on that is really the cause of the "too loud" affect with player pianos in general. The Pianodisc/ Disklavier market is pretty saturated throughout our area. Most of these are in very high end homes with marble type floors. The hard floors not only carry sound further and faster, but more importantly it deflects the sound off the floor and then redirects the sound straight up to the customer sitting on the couch, who happens to be in the middle of a conversation with a friend and can't hear a word what he's saying. The baffle foam approach applied to the underside deals with that specific problem and almost eliminates most of those issues. Tom Servinsky ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruce Dornfeld To: pianotech Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 10:04 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Baffles Greetings David, Baffles may be the solution for your client's problem, but not the only one. The Grand Piano Muffler is built by its inventor, Steve James, RPT of the Chicago Chapter. I have seen how it is installed and how it works. Its effect is much like the felt muffler in a vertical piano; it is the same thing applied to the grand. If I said it is still a work in progress, that would apply not to the finished product, but to the installation kit and instructions for the piano technician. Since the custom fit for each section of stringing needs to be exact, it takes a chunk of time. Steve said the first time installer should plan on 5 to 8 hours, perhaps this time has gone down in the months since he presented it to our chapter. We saw a Kawai grand with the muffler in it. It can be easily engaged or disengaged. The sound contrast was excellent. I know you deal with some high end pianos and clients; this is an excellent high end option. See grandpianomuffler.com. Bruce Dornfeld, RPT bdornfeld at earthlink.net North Shore Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090910/fe0cf686/attachment.htm>
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