[CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammer weights

[Horace Greeley]

At 02:35 PM 3/2/2011, you wrote:
>Understood.  Good being a relative term to modern pianos of the last 
>several decades or more.
>  I guess the limiting factor in every age is how heavy the action 
> is and will it give you carpal tunnel.

Hmmm...this really doesn't hold.

There is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting the position 
that the carpal tunnel situation has at least as much to do with 
technique as it does with any specific action setup.  I dealt with 
that whole issue very directly some years ago; and, at the end of the 
day, out of a stable of 7 piano instructors, the students of only one 
of them had a statistically significant increase in the amount or 
severity of CTS over all of the other instructors combined.

The underlying discussions are all in Ortmann.

Best.

Horace





>Dale S. Erwin
>www.Erwinspiano.com
>Custom restoration
>Ronsen Piano hammers
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>-----Original Message-----
>From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
>To: caut at ptg.org
>Sent: Wed, Mar 2, 2011 2:11 pm
>Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammer weights
>
>On Mar 2, 2011, at 2:49 PM, Dale Erwin wrote:
>
>>Usually I find that actions with good overall key/action ratios (ie 
>>5.5) are sabotaged with this kind of weight
>
>I would just note that the notion of 5.5 as a "good" action ratio is 
>a pretty modern one, last 50 years, say. If we want to talk about 
>pianos of the late 19th and early 20th century, often with reverent 
>terms as a benchmark to emulate, we need to remember that 6:1, 7:1, 
>8:1 are also "good" ratios. This is particularly true if we want to 
>talk about the "good" felt of that time and the tone quality it 
>produced. IOW, ratio, weight, and felt quality (density in 
>particular) are all factors that need to be in sync with one 
>another. (Leaving aside other concerns, like the belly design and 
>scale, that obviously also come into play).
>Regards,
>Fred Sturm
>University of New Mexico
><mailto:fssturm at unm.edu>fssturm at unm.edu
>
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>=