[CAUT] 1850's Pleyel Grand

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Ed.

I agree totally with your points about action re-design using Stanwood 
principles. I have made similar comment several times. I find his 
methods absolutely superb for balancing an existing system, and highly 
recommend the full 9 yards when it comes to that bit.  But I choose to 
look at any redesign of the actions ratio from the actions geometric 
perspective. There is a lot going on besides just weight.  The speed of 
parts seems always to be totally overlooked in ratio discussions. I also 
agree with your points about variety in actions... tho I must confess 
for most jobs I opt for a set of top medium SW curve hammers if the 
ratio is low enough.

Still, I'm very interested in the whole variety of belly and scaling 
perspectives available from history.  Everyone today seems to opt for a 
grain direction that goes very close to parallel to the bridge, with the 
basic idea of the ribs being the support for downbearing in some sense 
or another...and hence needing to themselves be alligned more or less 
perpendicular to the bridge.  There has been almost no discussion of how 
alignment of these can affect stiffness to mass ratio and how that can 
in turn be used to approach different tonal desires in different parts 
of the scale.  Taking that a few large steps further.... I want very 
much to understand better how much more radical grain directions were 
meant to function...what they were after, what reservations and 
compromises they were forced to face. Perhaps there is some worth 
following some of these early lines of thinking further down their 
respective roads.

One thing that goes again and again in these earlier instruments.  They 
were not meant to be hugely loud affairs. Instruments were often meant 
to be far more ... well.. portable in a sense.  By that I mean that you 
would expect a piano concert to be in a very intimate setting with a 
room in which allowed for a much different kind of instrument then the 
modern grand for the music being played.

Cheers
RicB



    Hi Ric,
        I'll just reiterate a bit of the point I was trying to make: it
    isn't
    just the difference in sound produced by the belly and scaling
    (though that
    is very important). It is also the difference in response felt by the
    pianist. I find certain tendencies of many who do "action re-design"
    following "Stanwood principles" rather disturbing. There is often a
    knee-jerk decision to go for, say, a "5.5 action ratio," with a
    corresponding decision to go for fairly heavy hammers. The heavy
    hammers are
    chosen because of a prejudice towards "wanting more fundamental" or
    something of that sort, and then the ratio tags along since
    otherwise you
    will have too much mass and corresponding inertia. Result: an even
    vanilla
    spectrum of pianos, rather than the variety that used to be so
    inspiring.
        I am very much in favor of having an array of hammer weight and
    action
    ratio to choose from. I suppose some will say that has to be matched
    to the
    belly and scaling, and probably they are at least somewhat correct.
    Though I
    understand that early (late 19th century) Steinway had heavy board and
    scaling with much lighter hammers than today. I don't think there is
    anywhere near a complete understanding of the interactions of all these
    things.
        At any rate, I am just speaking up for retaining, or at least
    considering retaining, high action ratio where it is found. Which
    does, of
    course, mean matching hammer mass to make it work.
        And you say the customer pretty much wants it the way it is, so this
    "advice" isn't going to make any difference. But I thought I'd air
    the ideas
    a bit anyway.
    Regards,
    Fred Sturm
    University of New Mexico