Hi Sounds like to begin with if you are going to get a Baldwin SD which is outpaced by a Boston upright ready to compete with any kind of decent concert grand at all you have a fairly time consuming project in front of you. I'm not familiar with Baldwins own version of the front duplex... but in general noises coming from these are caused by poor termination characteristics by the capo, an inappropriate counterbearing angle for whatever the intended capo profile and hardness parameters are supposed to be, and / or lengths that are harmonic to the speaking lengths. There is one trick I've recently discovered that works really good in the short term. Bend a bridge pin of medium thickness into a narrow "U" shape and insert it into the space between the outside two strings and the middle so that it is in solid contact with all three strings of the unison. Squeeze the outside two together abit at the counterbearing if you need to in order to secure very tight fit. In contrast to using felt to mute the over active duplex... this simply adds mass and couples the three together... effectively storing and reflecting the over active duplex energy back to the speaking length. I've measured an increase in sustain on the level of 3-5% in some cases and at least some definite increase (if ever so slight) in every single instance I've used this trick. I stumbled onto this just a couple months ago and havent really mentioned anything about it because I'm still scratching my head myself about it.... but at this point I'm ready to advise folks to give it a try and see what happens. In the end tho... a proper functioning front duplex needs a good profile that allows the string to flex across the capo as opposed to bend across it under vibration, an appropriate counterbearing angle, and an inharmonic to the speaking length front length. And you have to string down the instrument to get at those parameters. Thats my 2 cents anyways.... Cheers RicB I've got some tuning coming up for piano days here in Laredo. They want to do some duos and use the two resident concert grands together. Bit of a mis-match if you ask me... I'll encourage bringing another D over from another local venue but...I'll probably be stuck with tuning the Baldwin to the D. Here's the rub. The Baldwin has those proprietary front duplex thingamajigs and the shrieking and buzzing are just plain shrill and nasty. They are all over the place angle-wise so I haven't figured out a rhyme or reason for their positions. Does anyone know how to tame these or shall I just stuff that all full of felt for the concert at hand? Wondered about trickling CA glue in around the thingamajigs to see if that would help but it would be a nuisance to clean up if I had to. For those of you who wonder, the Baldwin was replaced by the D and banished to the choir room where it plays second fiddle to a Boston upright. Has great stability and good tone for the most part except the treble. Open to ideas, hopefully expertise. Andrew Anderson, Artisan Piano
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