front or back

[Fred Sturm]

Dale,
	I think that the small piece of felt was actually designed to straddle a 
node, and is small so that it bears more heavily (a la a high heel spike 
versus a regular flat heel). It's when the edge of a damper is at a node 
that it creates a ring. Or so I have always pictured it. Less felt will 
damp more efficiently than more felt if it is well placed (within limits).
	My sense is that the design came more from experience than from the human 
equivalent of the CAD, though.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico

--On Wednesday, September 3, 2003 8:58 PM -0400 Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote:
>
>        Good answer Ron, I always wondered about that. We generally use
> this  Stwy configuration of damper felt in other grands and it works
> well. I don't think I've ever heard an explaination of why in vintage
> stwys the bass damper felt is arranged so that the longer piece is in
> front and a quite small piece in the back. I'm going to guess that they
> were trying to avoid a nodal point which could hum  harmonically. I
> frequently cut the basss felts in four pieces in the mono chords and
> first 2 bichords then I go to two pieces ,the front one being longer than
> the rear. This arrangement give good damping except on some S&S A 2s
> which I think tmight have the dampers  sitting on nodal point. I've had
> some real trouble with damping in some of these. Perhaps this is why they
> were discontinued in favor of the A -3.      Dale