Delwin D Fandrich wrote:
> Why is it that so many technicians equate the lack of a 'duplex scale' with poor
> piano design? Especially considering all of the string problems that they
> struggle with that result from this design, I find this more than passing
> strange.
OH DEAR, HEAR IT GOES AGAIN,
A certain piano company is so highly regarded that all others are
judged by it. Therefore most pianos wishing to be "good" or atleast
known as "good" copy those attributes of this most highly regarded piano
whether all these attributes are good or evil. Any piano wishing to be
good, probably is good, or atleast somewhat so. Therefore we techs look
for the telltale attempts of a piano wishing to be good which lets us
know this instrument atleast tries and probably didn't scrimp on the
rest. One of those attributes is a duplex scale. It should take a
century more for this to go away, even if duplex scales are more evil
than good. Knowing your view, we (I) will not judge any of your
designed pianos based on presences or absence of duplex scaling.
Last week an artist complained about "bright pinginess" in the
upper range of our S&S D just before curtain. I took a strip of
flangebushing cloth and muted out the front (keyboard side) duplex in
that area--The artist was now happy. Later in the week one of our piano
faculty practiced and complained the piano sounded deader "alot
different" than they had remembered it up there. The bushing cloth
deadened it to my ear too and it is not currently in the piano. I call
that five second blanket tone regulating. If you want, I just purchased
an RCT with a "pianalyzer" which I could possibly measure the change in
timbre or overtone strengths resulting from a muted duplex.
-Mike Jorgensen
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