[CAUT] damper touch weight - head-weight preference?

[Edward Sambell]

Back in 1973 I did weight the damper heads on Anton Keurti's Hamburg Steinway D. 
It was my first acquaintance with him, and the circumstances make for a fairly 
long story, if you can bear with me. He had brought the piano from Toronto to 
here (London, Ontario) for a concert he was performing a week later. He asked me 
to replace all the wedge and singles damper felt, which he brought with him, 
sans the red backing. This came from Germany, and I was glad of that, as the 
agraffe holes were wider spaced than are New York Steinways, and most felts not 
specific to these would have been a real problem. A few bass felts had been 
replaced with some coarse hairy stuff, and a sizable hex nut was glued on top of 
one damper head. He ranted about the slow damping on F2, the bottom tenor note. 
This damper is short of course . He said that every D he played had the same 
problem and that it was lousy design. Although he did not complain about it, I 
found the singles to also damp slowly. After replacing all the felts including 
red backing from my own stock I re-installed the dampers. Result? No improvement 
whatever. I suppose I could have simply said I did what I could and that's the 
way the piano is, but it so happened I had a gunsmith's lead furnace I had 
acquired, not to make bullets , but to experiment with key leading. The Hamburg 
Steinway does not use damper lever springs, and the levers were already fully 
loaded with leads, so I decided to pour molten lead into two holes in each 
damper head, one on either side of the wire.. I duly bored the holes, 3/16" dia. 
and not right through and did the pouring, a tricky job.. When cooled I spread 
the lead with an improvised punch. There was no visible scorching of the wood, 
and the added weight was under 2 grams. The effect on the touch was 
undetectable.The  evening of the concert, Anton arrived. He glared at me and 
marched up to the piano, I knew what he was going to do, and he did. He gave the 
F2 a  big thump, stacatto. It damped! Perfectly. Anton said not a word, but gave 
me two of his LP's after the concert. I have lost count of the number of times I 
have prepared pianos for his performances over the years and we have becomes 
good friends. But this was the only time I ever weighted damper heads.

Ted Sambell




________________________________
From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: caut at ptg.org
Sent: Thu, December 23, 2010 8:44:23 AM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] damper touch weight - head-weight preference?

On 12/20/2010 9:28 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote:
> On 12/20/2010 9:19 AM, David Skolnik wrote:
>> Thanks Rn, I'll buy it, though I do wonder about the inertial effects of
>> having that weight at the end of that wire. In theory, that 'compliance'
>> you speak of could be exacerbated (yea, I know) by the increased
>> resistance of the head weight.
> 
> That's the point.
> 
> Ron N
> 

Sorry, I got sidetracked and didn't finish this.

As to damping, putting the mass in the head minimizes compliance between the 
damper mass and the string. It's a more direct coupling than with the mass in 
the under lever. It may be a problem in the power stroke if the mass is high, 
guide bushing loose, or wire bends extreme, but for damping, it's ideal.
Ron N


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