An excellent commentary. I would go so far as to say thee most valuable
thing with Stanwood methodology is the ability to provide such even
levels of mass in both hammer and key resulting in unprecedented
evenness of BW. I am less enthused with some of the ratio design
applications of this methodology I've seen I have to admit that. But
when it comes to balancing a well designed action... nothing can come
close. Once an appropriate set of hammer SW's is chosen for the given
action... and instrument otherwise.... it is then that Stanwood really
comes into its own IMHO.
I'd agree about the extremes on both ends.... they are instructive to be
sure... but somewhere in the middle resides that comfortable responsive
range me thinks.
As for comments about appropriate hammers with respect to denseness and
weight relative to soundboard responsiveness. These are interesting to
be sure, and tho I do not discount them in any sense of the word, I do
miss the kind of data that sheds light on user end preferences of the
sort that Stanwood has provided for actions, and I tho such data will
probably never exist... I do wonder at what it would reveal.
Cheers
RicB
We are very fortunate to have talented and creditable techs at both
ends
of this spectrum. Even if it comes to be that some middle ground is
what prevails long term, as I expect, look at what we have learned in
the process! Deep down those with strong feelings one way or the other
hopefully can agree on that. May that spirit and discussion of
challenging ideas we saw take root in our organization maybe 10-15
years
ago... continue.
From the experiments I tried with M-'s leadless (or even near
leadless)
method there was too much first inertia to feel comfortable, or perhaps
just too different from what most players are familiar with. The
beauty
of Stanwood's approach is that is the ideas are sound and applicable to
any weight range of hammers. We have seen the presentation and
marketing of ideas change profoundly in PTG over the past 10+ years
however, for reasons I don't pretend to understand. It is what it is,
and I suppose you can't fault people for trying to maximize income.
cheers,
Dennis Johnson
St. Olaf College
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20070529/5d67c1ec/attachment.html
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC