I realize that many people are rushing off to Albuquerque, but I'm going to throw this in now anyway, and I hope we can pick up where we left off next week. I do not pretend to be a physicist, but I believe I have followed most of the discussion and David Stanwood has yet to answer for the biggest consequence of heavy hammers, which is inertia. Inertia is independent of leverage, and also of strike ratio (as I understand strike ratio). If there is some formula to isolate and measure inertia please share that with us. The consequence of inertia is very evident to the player and anyone who promotes heavy hammers must confront this issue. As with many debates, extremely opposite models are usually held up by each opposing side to demonstrate weakness. Concerning light hammers, very few technicians actually go to the extreme that Ed McMorrow does with his high touch weights and no leads. My touchweights, and that of most techs I know, fall in line with the traditional specs, as David also describes. The difference then, is inertia and tone. It must be a personal, aesthetic judgement whether or not the tone of heavy hammers is worth the added inertia. Personally, I still am not convinced that it is (at least for most pianos) but I will read David's argument. My understanding of the papers I have read on the pianos' non-linearity is that if hammers need to be heavier, that is only in the bass. They should actually be even lighter in the treble. The problem of course, is creating an illusion of relative evenness in touch. What if we somehow incorporated a slight gradation in leverage from low in the treble to higher in the bass and balanced this with a larger gradation in hammer mass from top to bottom?-- Just a wild idea, not too serious. I hope that we can take up the issue of inertia now as well, because we have gone far beyond the context of our original discussion concerning inertia months ago. Dennis Johnson St. Olaf College
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