[CAUT] Steinway "sound"

[David Love]

I agree that there are differences that can be attributed to the bellies, but with respect to the subject heading, I don't know if I would say that they rise to the level of obscuring an otherwise fundamentally recognizable tonal signature.


David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com
(sent from bb)

-----Original Message-----
From: Horace Greeley <hgreeley at sonic.net>
Sender: caut-bounces at ptg.org
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:39:02 
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Reply-To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway "sound"



Hi,

Definitely the belly work is core; much more 
important in the process than tone 
regulation.  By the time an instrument gets to 
the latter points of the process, the most the 
tone regulator can reasonably hope to do is to 
give the instrument as full a voice as possible 
without overemphasizing the weak spots of the particular system/piano.

Selections in NY can be difficult to parse, 
too.  It's never clear how much time is spent on 
the instruments, how big the pool of technicians 
doing the work might be, or how consistent the 
concept of tone and touch might be between 
them.  From that standpoint, if you're working 
with a local dealer that is large enough to host 
a real selection, there will probably be only one 
or two technicians working on the instruments, so 
(for better or worse) the degree and quality of 
prep will be much more regular between them.

Actually, after too long a time of too much 
unpredictability and inconsistency, I think we're 
getting better instruments overall now than we 
have since the later-50's/early-60's.  While 
there's still "stuff" (...there's always 
"stuff"...), and some of it isn't small, it seems 
as if some of the more egregious manufacturing 
problems are gradually being worked out.  With 
Ron Losby at the helm, I suspect that the degree 
of convergence between NY and Hamburg will 
continue to increase.  It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

Best.

Horace



At 09:00 PM 2/14/2011, Jim Busby wrote:
>David,
>
>I think the bellies. In voicing class, and in 
>the other 3 classes we also had 4 different 
>pianos and got to tweak them, try different 
>things, and they were a mixed bag. IOW, if it 
>wasn’t the belly and just the hammers you 
>could technically make them all sound about the 
>same using the same voicing techniques, right? 
>No way here, IMO. They were different beasts. I 
>wish I had your rebuilding chops and could give a better answer.
>
>Jim Busby
>
>
>From: caut-bounces at ptg.org 
>[mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Love
>Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 9:01 PM
>To: caut at ptg.org
>Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway "sound"
>
>Jim:
>
>The other question I meant to ask is with 
>respect to the experiences you had at the 
>factory.  Do you think the differences in the 
>B’s were owing to differences in the bellies 
>themselves or just differences in the amount of 
>prep work given to the D’s over the 
>B’s?   Recently a batch of new B’s were 
>delivered to Stanford and before they were 
>dispersed to the various rooms around I had 
>chance to go through them side by side.  There 
>were a lot more similarities than differences to 
>me.  Some differences could be accounted for by 
>hammer density alone, you could tell.  And some 
>other differences were sectional, some killer 
>octaves were better than others and there were a 
>few odd clunker notes here and there but they 
>seemed to be mostly termination problems.  Tenor 
>and bass sections were very much alike.  I 
>don’t think I sat down to any one of them and 
>said, wow now that’s different, though I had my favorites.
>
>David Love
>www.davidlovepianos.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>I’ve been in the selection room in NY and the 
>tone was all over the place with Bs but not 
>quite as much with Ds, in my opinion. What I was 
>hinting at is our worn out question; don’t Ds 
>in concert halls, as well as the Steinway C&A Ds 
>have a certain characteristic tone that is 
>“Steinway”? I agree with what you said below 
>that we have the ability to reproduce it (last 
>sentence below) but nearly all the rebuilds 
>I’ve heard are not like Steinway. Nor do they 
>try to be. That’s why (I think) Brent made his 
>statements. Not in disrespect to anyone, but who 
>might better duplicate the “Steinway sound” 
>if there is such an animal, than Steinway? Now 
>I’ll bow out and let all the retorts fly. <G>
>
>Best,
>Jim
>
>