Duplex Scale Tuning

[Ron Nossaman]

>What a load.  Take a piano with a good duplex and play it with and without 
>the duplex muted and the difference is very noticeable. How can one say that 
>it is a marketing plan? 

* Play the same piano with the duplex open and softer hammers, and the
difference will be very noticeable too. The piano will sound pretty dead,
in spite of the duplexes. The hard hammers and tuned duplexes are both in
place to mask the fact than the soundboard is working at low efficiency.
The same piano, with appropriate rim and belly rail bracing and/or real
(rather than "select" hardwood), scale, bridge, rib and soundboard design,
with the tuned duplexes designed out, and much softer hammers than you're
used to hearing, will sound just fine without all the whanging, whistling,
pinging, zinging, and sizzling noises associated with tuned duplexes, and
will have a better dynamic range, good killer octave, clear ringing high
treble, and smooth crossover as a bonus. I'd call selling a tuned duplex to
justify that kind of trade off a hell of a marketing plan, wouldn't you?


>Lost energy ... we even see energy transferring into 
>the plate and almost all other components.

>Ed Tomlinson

* See? And the inefficiency of the rim, string termination, and soundboard
design requires the extra noises of the tuned duplexes and extra hard
hammers to compensate. 

Ron N