"TomTuner" Said:" I keep hearing Joe G telling me that they are supposed to perform that way. I am still hoping for some improvement in damping and will report later." Tom, there is a strange phenomena regarding Overdampers efficiency. When the piano is in good tune the "over-ring" seems to almost disappear. And, what little is left is the intended "sound". I will explain, ONE MORE TIME: Those pianos were made side by side with modern uprights and grands and in some cases, square grands! Why would they continue to make these, (perceived), substandard pianos?? There was a demand for them! Why was there a demand??? Because they sounded like "gramma's piano"!!! Now, stop and think about this. If this is the 1880's and someone wants a piano to sound like "gramma's piano", just exactly what kind of a piano was GRAMMA's PIANO???? Probably something made pre-1850. In those kinds of pianos, actions, dampers tuning pins, soundboards, tuning pins and almost every aspect of those pianos, had to suffer through with untried technology and materials. They sounded like #$%^%! K? However, the emotionalism of our time was prevalent then as it is now! We just had a discussion about that sort of thing with the "Haynes" Pianer! It was a simple Supply vs. Demand situation. If the Dealers could sell that stuff, they would!! Now, to the ENGLISH Overdamper. Being that the British have a major reputation of TRADITION! that sort of piano hung on till well into the 1930's!!! For those of us in the U.S.of A. We, unfortunately get to see most of the crap that was rejected by the English Tuners! (That is a fact!) Hence, the bad rep for these types of pianos. I've worked on hundreds of them and I'd say I had to say the last rights on at least 40% of them. Out of the remaining 60% most were just barely servicable and cost the owners major dollars to fix! Fortuneately, I was the recipient of a lot of those dollars.<G> Of all of the over-damper pianos, the German ones were the most decent. The English ones were the 19th century equivalent of a Ghetto Blaster, IMO. Cheap intertainment made for the unwashed masses.<G> Most had really substandard base structures/soundboards AND especially Pin Blocks. These Pin Blocks were literally Blocks of wood, butt joined and covered with a very thin veneer. These suckers probably started to self-destruct w/in the first year of English Climate, seeing's how they were glued together with Fish Glue and substandard Hide glue.<G> Anyway, they are what they are and, if, you as a tech, have any smarts at all, I would suggest you take my suggestion of NOT trying to make the dampers more efficient!! Due to the basic engineering (yeah, right!), it is not a doable thing, but rather an excercise in futility.<G> Regards, Joe Joe Garrett, R.P.T. (Oregon) Captain, Tool Police Squares R I -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090914/1c467710/attachment.htm>
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