[CAUT] Steinway sound

[Dale Erwin]

 I would bet that Stawood protocols probably were driven to fruition by all those unintended consequences you refer to David. The ones that produced action ratios all over the map. And the hammers getting heavier put on high ratio actions from pre-war times.
 So,...  Finally after hearing thousands of pianist complain about heavy actions & funky tone, the collective technicians consciousness said "Enough is enough is enough. All fix the  d_ _ _ thing & voila. David Stanwoods protocols were popularized, utilized and refined to the betterment of the piano world. 
 So I think we have fired the designer

 

 

Dale S. Erwin
www.Erwinspiano.com
Custom restoration
Ronsen Piano hammers
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-----Original Message-----
From: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>
To: caut at ptg.org
Sent: Mon, Mar 7, 2011 8:07 pm
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway sound


That's assuming that you agree that all the changes that happened were

actually deliberate "design changes".  I'm more cynical.  I think it's often

more the law of unintended consequences than a conscious decision to change

the design.  A change of hammer making protocols or suppliers of felt and

molding produces a hammer that weighs two or three grams more than the

original, with a 16 mm knuckle it results in 7 leads in the bass or,

combined with an inexact plate indexing procedure, sometimes 9 leads.

People complain, eventually they move to 17 mm knuckle, people still

complain, they start trimming the hammer, the 17 mm knuckle doesn't work

that well with the old wippen so they modify all the parts and voila! A new

design of new and improved parts.  Or, apropos to this discussion, some well

intentioned individual from the outside decides that the original +3 gram

hammer was a design intention and seeks to modify the action ratio to be

able to handle it, keep the original 3-2-1-0 leading pattern to control

inertia and ends up with 1/2 inch key dip--but damn that thing feels light.

All because the hammer unexpectedly got heavy due to a careless

manufacturing.  I'm not suggesting that represents any particular factual

sequence of events but it seems more likely than that each of those was a

conscious design change.  



Of course, since the action ratios do vary quite a bit and different

pianists of different eras got used to all kinds of things, you might have

to make a decision as to what to do and in the process one pianist somewhere

who grew up on 7.0 action ratios and 9 leads in the bass might be unhappy.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take a chance and make an executive

decision to put things together in such a way that you think is likely to

please or at least be pleasantly accepted by the great majority.  We have to

do that all the time and most venues only have one piano.  



There comes a time in every similar endeavor when you have to close the

book, shoot the designer and build the damn thing (and take your chances).





David Love

www.davidlovepianos.com







This raises an interesting point:  Since (like all other 

manufacturers of all other products) S&S reserves to itself the right 

to change it's specifications in whatever way, and at whatever time 

they choose.  So...following the logic of that logic (if you will), 

it's pretty obvious that (keeping things to actions), the "touch" 

would have changed fairly dramatically over time; and, the more one 

works on instruments from various periods the more one might come to 

this conclusion.  And, it might, therefore, follow, that one could 

legitimately use whatever parts are contemporaneously available today 

in order to attempt to recreate whatever that original touch (and 

tone) might have been, and stay within the overall concept of 

retaining the "Steinway-ness" of the instrument.  That part is all 

well and good; and, I think, qualifies as A Very Good Thing.



On the other hand, when one chooses to follow that logic, one has to 

be aware that not every pianist is going to feel ecstatic about 

either the sound or the touch.  So, another choice one makes in 

following the above logic is the one that consciously accepts that 

one's final product may not be acceptable to one or more 

pianists.  If one has multiple performance instruments, that may be 

cool, because, presumably (since one might choose to leave at least 

one with a relatively current "stock" setup) there would be other 

instruments from which to choose, and it wouldn't matter so much if 

one were not deemed satisfactory.  However, if one has only one 

performance instrument available in a given space, one might wind up 

with a fairly serious problem.



FWIW, statements like the one Jennie relates can often be traced back 

to the sales pitches developed by the old Piano Travelers' 

Association.  While in the context Jennie relates, the brand name is 

Steinway, many of these statements/pitches were developed to be used 

by a Traveler in their day-to-day work, and modified as necessary to 

fit whatever brand happened to be on the truck.



Best.



Horace








 
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