Dead sounding Bechstein

[Stephen F Schell]

Dear Sindri and List,

My first step would be to determine to what extent the tone producing
structure (i.e. strings, soundboard, rim, etc.) is responsible. I would
try plucking individual strings with fingernail or pick, first in the
area where sustain is still good, then above in the problem area. Hold
the individual notes' dampers up with the key; the sustain pedal would
confuse the results. Does the tone in the problem area remain strong for
a couple seconds, then slowly start to decay smoothly? Good. Does it die
rapidly as when struck with the hammer? Not good.

Seating the strings to the bridge and lifting and leveling the strings at
the agraffes may help a lot. I serviced Bechsteins at the NAMM trade show
out here several years ago, and the strings were so high on the bridge
pins that the tone was thin and buzzing in the treble. Seating and
lifting helped more on those pianos than on any I have seen since. Since
this piano is so new, it is possible that these procedures have never
been done to it before.

If the problem area passes the pluck test, then the hammers are the chief
suspect. I cannot speak with much experience about new Bechstein hammers,
but I have seen a common condition on other newer European pianos. Often
the hammers fitted to these (and many other) pianos seem to me to be pressed to too high a felt density. This results in a tone which has a loud
attack, but a thin, wiry sound afterwards with poor sustain. It sounds
as though the fundamental and lower partials never get excited well, or
get damped out by the hammer. Sometimes the tops of hammers like this
have been heavily voiced to eliminate a shrill sounding pianissimo,
which results in a dull, fuzzy pianissimo breaking through to a thin ,
harsh forte tone. Yeacchh.

                                             The location of the strike
line can be at fault sometimes, but usually not as low as note 55. It
might be worth moving the action in and out from it's normal location
while listening to notes in the problem area.

When hard hammers seem to be the culprit, I usually try a single needle
pass through the side of the hammer, halfway between the top of the
hammer and tip of the molding. I then listen to see if the tone starts
to warm up and the sustain begins to awaken. If they do, then I proceed
cautiously with more single needle work through the side in other areas,
or a few passes in the "traditional" manner, beyond the ends of the
string depressions down into the shoulders roughly parallel with the
molding. The idea is to free up felt which has been frozen motionless
from excess density, and return it to the springy, resilient part of the
hammer. If the top of the hammer has had a lot of surface needling, it
may be necessary to do a light shaping to remove this squishy layer, as
it can really kill sustain.

Please note, Sindri, that these voicing techniques are the ones which work for me, but other technicians may insist that they are wrong for this piano, or wrong in general. What we would all likely agree on is that it
is necessary to proceed cautiously, especially on so fine and costly a piano as a new Bechstein.

Good luck with this piano!

Steve Schell
stfrsc@juno.com



On Wed, 13 Nov 1996 00:50:28 +0000 notan <notan@itn.is> writes:
>Dear list
>
>A customer has a 3 year old C.Bechstein Mod.C-32 232cm. It is a beuti=
>ful
>instrument it plays great and has a beutiful tone except there is abo=
>ut an
>octave or so in the treble about from note 55 which sounds dead. By t=
>hat I
>mean that the tone of these notes does not suststain as long as we wo=
>uld
>like and the change in sustain is very clear , one note it is is fine=
> and
>the next it is gone.I would very much like some advice as to how to g=
>et
>more "singing " caracter out of this section .
>
>Hope to hear from you !
>
>
>Sindri Heimisson
>
>Pianotechnician
>Reykjavik
>Iceland
>
>Bestu kve=F0jur
>
>Sindri
>
>
>
>