At 11:53 04/10/01 -0400, Tom Servinsky wrote: >Question: What do think is the reasoning behind the Erard design, placing >the checking mechanism in front of the hammer? My guess was either a touch >weight issue, eliminating the extra weight on the hammer and backcheck, then >transferring the checking onto the shank, or possibly could it be a tonal >issue ( less mass on the hammer). The ordinary backcheck was impossible in combination with his under-damper mechanism, whether on his earlier (monstrous) designs or on the design most commonly encountered, where the damper body is pushed down by a flat metal spoon at the back of the intermediate lever. Less back-half weight is a serendipitous by-product of this constraint rather than Erard's aim, if he even recognised it as a bonus. JD
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