<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On May 22, 2008, at 10:37 AM, Jim Busby wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; ">The Crescendo punchings don’t compress as much so you get a firm felling of the bottom of the key and exactly where it is. To my limited understanding and experience this is why it “works better”. I just know what the pianists say. As far as the tone goes, there is a difference. You can play with it yourself. (Ed Foote’s post.)</span></blockquote></div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A couple thoughts about the Crescendo punchings, which I have used a bit, but not enough to have really firm opinions on them. First, they don't feel as hard as you might think from description. They are hammer felt, but not as hard as what is used for hammers. At any rate, they feel like they compress more than what we are sold as scrap hammer felt. And they are made with undersized holes, so that the front rail pin seems to "spring" them when they go on, making them a bit thicker.<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>About how they could affect tone, well, remember that even though we think that by the time the key hits bottom, the hammer is no longer being propelled, it really isn't so, at least on relatively hard blows. High speed videography shows that for a fairly wide dynamic range (forte and more) letoff occurs after bottoming of the key. For fortississimo blows, the hammer barely moves before the key bottoms, at least with some keys (some designs stiffen keys more than others). So there could very well be feedback somehow "through the key to the hammer." I think I'd guess that a woven punching would have more of a deadening/damping impact on the key, while the felted one might reflect some energy back from the front of the key through the key toward the capstan. Speculation, but a possible mechanism. I'm thinking that maybe it acts just like hammers, in having that "non-linear hardening" effect, which would make for a variance depending on strength of blow in a curve, which might transfer to various elements of tone. And I'm not so sure that keybed vibration doesn't have a musical function along with the "noise" factor, in vibrating along with the whole rim and soundboard assembly, amplifying the energy output in some way.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>So there could be something more happening than just a change of the impact noise of key on keybed/keyframe. <br><div><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">Regards,</div><div>Fred Sturm</div><div>University of New Mexico</div><div><a href="mailto:fssturm@unm.edu">fssturm@unm.edu</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></div><br><div></div></div></div></body></html>