[CAUT] Steinway sound

[David Love]

And well it should be considering the weight of the new hammers compared to
the old ones.  There's probably some optimum relationship between hammer
weight and shank stiffness, though I don't really know how I would determine
that.  A lightweight hammer on a very stiff shank or a heavyweight hammer on
a more flexible shank certainly doesn't make sense intuitively and my
experiences with saving old hammers and rehanging them on new octagonal
shanks have produced something a bit "strange".  Some flexing of the shank
is probably necessary to give you a feel for where the hammer is exactly--if
you can't feel the hammer you have a hard time controlling it.  Too much
flex is simply too much of a good thing and you start to lose control on the
other end.  

Not only was there a time when every quality grand had shanks that were
thinned in the upper ranges but there was also a time when the bass shanks
were thicker than the tenor shanks which were in turn thicker than the
treble shanks.  Shank diameters weren't just adjusted for the last 17 notes
but changed gradually through the entire set.  

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com







	I doubt a longer shank would practical (lots of reasons), but the  
newer Steinway shank design is clearly stiffer than the older. 

<snip>


Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them." Coco  
Chanel