Good post, Jeff, We all keep on keepin' on trying to better what's been bettered over the years! I'm curious which of you folks actually rebuild strictly to the specs of only Steinway parts on original design, and how they end up? Why were the grands from the '20's so much better than the ones from the '70's and 80's? Why did they mess with a good thing? Just marketing a buzz phrase to sell more? I really don't understand that one. A million opinions are great....some of them are, but does anyone try to sell the Steinway company on their own personal design changes to get them to build even better pianos? I doubt it. some of these changes are great, and some work, and some don't. That's how the piano got so much better in the first place over the last 100 years. Viva la differance (sorry no French in my blood!) I admit that I do the same thing, hoping for "the better" piano. I admit that I've used other parts to "rebuild" our Steinways, and mostly, the pianos are now very nice instruments. It's good to have so many minds trying to better this magnificent instrument that we all love. It's also helps to have "practice pianos" in our rooms for me to try these things out. I have "experimented" with different hammers, shanks, turbo wips, Wapin, and other things, and have had a mixed result with some pianos ending up very nice, and some not so nice. I must admit that when it comes to concert instruments here at UNL, I lean toward a conservative approach.....The only "radical" thing I did was Wapinize a 1956 Baldwin D in a great one-day-seminar with Tim Coates and the PTG . The piano ended up, fortunately, very nice and saved a full soundboard/bridge, etc/ rebuild. I put on Ronson Wurzen hammers, but no matter what anyone sez, I had a devil of a time getting them to sound nice. (maybe a bad set) Nobody wants to use the Yamaha C-3 any more for jazz ensembles or orchestra that was previously used all the time. I Wapinized 4 since, and only one '66 Baldwin was only a bit better, but due to a bad board. Still it's now useable for a few more years with no false beasts, and some increase in sustain. I would like, sincerely, who rebuilds totally to factory specs, and who puts in their own, (or other's "own") stuffs to get a great piano in the end. When does a Steinway/Baldwin/Grotrian/Sieler/etc etc, etc, stop being themselves? now there's a topic for the week.! :>) All in good faith, Best, Paul From: tannertuner <tannertuner at bellsouth.net> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 05/17/2010 12:18 PM Subject: [CAUT] CAUT endorsement And there is one more reason I believe it is unwise to include so much in the CAUT endorsement. Bill was right. For better or worse, universities are on board with this All-Steinway thing, and as much as we'd like to blame it on effective Steinway marketing, there is still a deeply entrenched appreciation for the Steinway product among piano faculty and performers. I mean, Yamaha, has an extremely effective marketing campaign as well, but most (not all) music department faculty, after playing a Yamaha, and most everything else, will still go back to old faithful that they're familiar with and have come to rely on. But in PTG, we are fortunate to learn that Steinway doesn't know how to make a piano, and that musicians and music faculty and administrators are unfortunate naive victims of a clever corporate marketing scheme. We learn in PTG, that as soon as you get a chance, you gut a Steinway, install a Boulduc soundboard, with a Wapinized Nossaman bridge, grind out the capo and install brass round stock, Delignit pinblock with Low-Torq tuning pins, rescale it with Rosalu steel strings, Arledge bass strings, install Renner wippens with rep spring adjustment screw and wippen assist springs, Abel shanks, Ronsen Wurtzen Bacon hammers, WNG capstans, Tokiwa backchecks, Yamaha damper felt, and the treble brace thingy the name of which escapes me, perform a Stanwood touchweight overhaul and you're on the way to turning it into a decent musical instrument. Now THAT'S a Steinway! Not that all those aren't without merit and I mean NO disrespect. But people who like Steinways are going to look at you like you've just claimed you were born in a galaxy far, far away, you've just arrived on earth in an egg shaped space capsule like your sister's cousin's uncle Mork, and that you're capable of turning soiled disposable diapers into 24 carat gold with the touch of the back side of your pinky toenail. As long as there is such an anti-Steinway approach to maintaining Steinways taught in the PTG, none of our credentials will ever mean a hill of beans to people who have a deep-seated love and respect for Steinways, which includes faculty and administrators at music schools. With all due respect, Jeff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100517/f4be6245/attachment.htm>
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