About two weeks ago we were engaged by a serious amateur player to improve the one and touch on his 2005 Mason Hamlin CC (9'4") oncert grand. In the almost six years he's owned the instrument, he's had a eritable parade of technicians here in southern California o their best to make the instrument "sound bigger than a 6-foot instrument, and o let me play it soft with good repetition" (owner's words.) David You and your team obviously did a great job "remanufacturing" this piano so that it sounds and plays like a real 9'4" piano. The question that came to my mind was, why didn't the owner of the piano ask M&H to make the piano better? Or get his money back. WIm -----Original Message----- From: David Andersen <david at davidandersenpianos.com> To: Pianotech Pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Sun, Apr 3, 2011 1:20 pm Subject: [pianotech] Big challenge met(finally) About two weeks ago we were engaged by a serious amateur player to improve the one and touch on his 2005 Mason Hamlin CC (9'4") oncert grand. In the almost six years he's owned the instrument, he's had a eritable parade of technicians here in southern California o their best to make the instrument "sound bigger than a 6-foot instrument, and o let me play it soft with good repetition" (owner's words.) ow the piano is in a beautiful performance space in mid-town L.A., and the wner has a 7-foot Shigeru Kawai in his house, so the stark ifference between the pianos is truly glaring. When I sat down and played it, it sounded like a really nice Yamaha C2(6'3") or 5 (6'7") with a weird resistance at the bottom of the keystroke and a generally ushy or indefinite feeling. I started to remember another M&H CC my partner teve Bellieu and I had worked on five or six years ago that was similar: better eeling action, but a really "small" sound for such a big instrument. The roblem then? Short blow distance. Concert grands should have a minimum of 46mm low; if the action ratio and geometry can support 47 or 48mm, so much the etter. So: on to diagnostics in the present day---- -Board eval.: good sustain, good bloom in all sections; positive crown, positive earing Blow distance: 39mm (Huh?!!?) Key travel: 9.75mm (shallow; we prefer 10.25-10.5mm) Action ratio via Erwin's Ratio Gauge: over 6.0, less than 6.5 (way too high for modern action, and a huge disparity in ratio between sharps and naturals) Downweight: 55-58gm Upweight: 30-32gm Balance Weight: 42.5-45.0 (too heavy, too resistant; we never like to go beyond 39.0 balance weight) Action spread: 112.60mm (OK; ideal is 112.75mm) Key leads: very light; one lead in #6; one lead in #20; three leads in the low harps; back leads ( behind the balance rail) in keys 66-88 The shanks were resting or barely off the cushions, so we realized quickly we ould have to cut into something important to make this work: the stack was too igh. The ratio was too high. Somebody had cut the hammers way, way down in the ail; everything was cacked up. What we did: lowered the back of the stack 2mm lowered the front of the stack + - 4mm moved and custom-set the capstan line (different positions for sharp and atural capstans) re-weighed the keys (added more lead) peeled back the shank rest cushions (took off about 3 mm of material) set key travel at 10.5mm put Crescendo (white Wurzen felt) punchings on the front rail reglued six hammerheads in the bass that had come loose from the molding parts-to-strings alignment bed keyframe, complete action regulation final blow distance: 47.5mm in bass, 46.5mm in tenor and treble added mini-binder clips to shanks on wound strings final Balance Weight: 36.5 in tenor and treble, 38.5 in the bass regulated pedals, timed dampers tightened plate bolts Voiced it Tuned it inal tone: way, way bigger and fatter---now it sounds like a balanced 9-foot iano with a good (not huge) bass inal touch: buttery, light, fast, and responsive; repeats with excellence at ll volumes Later, we'll dry-fit test some different hammers on the thing---new Renner luePoints and Ronsen 14-lb. Weickerts---with the owner present and see if we an sell that work. can't wait until he puts his hands on it on Tuesday morning...I LOVE the eactions at that time, 'cuz it's literally a different piano; uge wow factor. Moral: if a new-ish piano sounds and feels like sh**t, and the board is good, oing more regulation, lubrication, and voicing without changing the oundational relationships so they comply is like moving deck chairs around on he Titanic---some well-known area techs tried repeatedly and failed to improve his piano. The owner told me he's spent "thousands" over the past five years on ttempts to make the piano sound and feel better, although (appropriately, IMO) e declined to name the attemptees. cary. The big take-aways? ) If you are unable to do the kind of work described above, ASK FOR HELP. onsult with a tech/rebuilder who can. ) EVERY SINGLE MILLIMETER OF BLOW DISTANCE YOU CAN EEK OUT, GO FOR IT. hortened blow distances have devastating effect on the tone and power of a grand piano. ) It pays to develop your diagnostic skills. Three techs made good money for heir involvement in this job---their hourly rate at full retail. Collaboration is king. Best, David Andersen os Angeles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110404/fcc7b338/attachment.htm>
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