[pianotech] key leveling with a curve

Horace Greeley hgreeley at sonic.net
Tue Oct 12 23:47:48 MDT 2010


Hi, Ron,

At 09:33 PM 10/12/2010, you wrote:

>Functionally, it's a non event. Visual aesthetics are an almost 
>plausible explanation. Then again, it would be interesting to see if 
>anyone (at all) could visually (without sighting down the row) pick 
>a 1/32" crowned key level out from among six pianos, five of which 
>are leveled flat. Can anyone actually do this, or is sheep dip, yet 
>again, apparently an acquired taste?

While I suspect that it is, for many, sheepdip; I can relate from 
direct experience that there were (at one time) at least four 
pianists who definitely could detect this phenomenon:  They were (or, 
in a couple of cases, still are): Ivan Moravec, Eugene Istomin, John 
Perry and James Boyk.  These could and did directly identify this, 
and other, kinds of fairly low-level action-related issues when I 
have worked with them.  I'm sure that there were others who at least 
cognated such things even if they did not necessarily have ways in 
which to articulate what they were experiencing.

That said, as you note, I strongly suspect that these kinds of things 
are largely non-events for most players under most circumstances.

Best.

Horace
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