[CAUT] Lacquered hammers

[David Love]

I'm not really interested in this type of dialogue except to say that unless
the door is open to an honest dialogue you're not likely to get one.  Nobody
said this was easy or that you don't have to take risks or choose what you
think is the lesser of two evils.  Good luck.   

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron
Nossaman
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2011 12:22 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Lacquered hammers

On 2/19/2011 1:30 PM, David Love wrote:
>  I suppose the same could be said on the other side as
> well, pianos that don't give much at the bench might provide a quite
> balanced and beautiful tone in the hall.

You suppose it could be said? Really? I just did say it, and have 
demonstrated it in public, with actual people. Well, techs, anyway.


>Unfortunately, for the audience
> member to hear it you have to first get the pianist to play it and if you
> can't convince the pianist about how the audience member will hear it in
> spite of what they experience at the bench then maybe you've put the
> priority in the wrong place.

Yea, that's probably it, I'm going about this all wrong. I'll have to 
ignore the paying audience and build for the pianist. Glad that's 
settled. Now, which pianist should I build for, the one who wants it 
lacquered up, or the one who wants it voiced down? Rhetorical. Don't bother.


> But for a performance piano with a variety of pianists
> coming through you have to aim for something that will appeal to the
> broadest range of artists.

Whatever that is.


> I do think it's unfair to characterize production pianos as simply having
> "an extensive list of faults and deficiencies" or to suggest that
demanding
> pianists praise those.

I've found the listed faults and deficiencies in production pianos since 
I started in the business. No, not every problem in every piano, so 
don't bother to go there. I've read for years on the pianotech and caut 
lists, questions on how to deal with low tenors that honk, dead killer 
octaves and trebles, and tuned front duplex noises. These from 
production pianos, sometimes right out of the crate. So I didn't 
"characterize" production pianos as having these problems, convenient as 
that makes your reply, but I have most certainly found all of them in 
production pianos, and so have all those who wrote in to the lists 
asking advice on dealing with them. If you haven't, I envy your charmed 
existence. What I did say is that if we had grown up not listening to 
and having to deal with these problems, we wouldn't suddenly start 
putting up with them in new pianos.


>Demanding pianists expect a certain range of musical
> expression and a certain sensitivity in the instrument even if it means
they
> can overdrive it if they're not careful.  In fact, sometimes that's
exactly
> what they want to do.

That's correct, they sometimes want exactly that. But yet no two pianos 
out there reach that "feature" at the same dynamic level, or in the same 
areas of the scale, yet the redesigner is supposed to reproduce the 
effect. This sort of thing makes me wonder what the customer of a 
redesign project thinks they want, as opposed to what they have, and 
what they'll get. Why bother at all? Just do conventional rebuild work 
with CC soundboards and take what comes out. Then everyone will be happy.


>A piano that makes you sound better than you are can
> do so because it limits the sensitivity of the piano's tonal range and
pulls
> everything to the middle, dumbs it down a bit where one's minor missteps
> won't be so noticed--like driving a race car versus a smooth cruising
sedan.
> I can recall some of the early lessons I had when I was younger with a
> teacher who had a Hamburg B. I'd never played on anything like that and at
> first I couldn't control it--it was far too sensitive.  But after I got
used
> to it, it was a dream.

Dumbs it down. That's it. I should have known that.


> I also think it's unfair to characterize more conventional designs as
"badly
> balanced scales, bright metallic voicing, aurally obvious (to offensive)
> break transitions, and killer octaves and trebles that overdrive into
> distortion at anything over moderate attack levels".  While those problems
> can exist to a greater or lesser degree, to suggest that as the standard
by
> which pianists measure everything else by virtue of what they've gotten
used
> to is unfair not only to the pianos but to the pianists as well.

Unfair? The fact that these things do exist (to varying degrees, as you 
agree) in a lot of "conventionally" designed pianos, and there are so 
very few nicely scaled and balanced instruments out there, means to me 
that it's an observation. I don't consider it unfair to observe that 
when the lights are out, it's dark.
Ron N