Richard wrote: >As to how to decide the "Tuning" of the front duplex area there are to basic >and rather opposite views. Steinway, the Copycats, and supporters say consonat >harmonics.... as in P5's, 8's, double 8's and the like. The 'copycat' pianos are just as noisy as the original stuff. Its amazing just how many piano makers have their collective heads stuck firmly in the 'sand pit', doing things just because one company has done it a certain way. What's so wrong with doing just a little bit of original thinking. Check out the pianos from Kawai, Steinway and Yamaha in the International Piano Competition circuit. They've nearly all got felt listing out the duplexs they can't control. And they've all got a last note on the long bridge at F21. And they've all got a speaking length of 183 cm on that same note. What a boring world their design departments must be. The clones makers must only have two tools in the research department. Just imagine their research equipment inventory; 1) One Stienway concert piano. 2) One ruler * Design process: Measure the Steinway, regardless of its design merits or otherwise. But above all, don't listen or criticise, or the head designer will move you out to a dealer (this actually happened at one of the clone factories - not saying which one). * Design outcome: Make a copy instrument with nearly identical scale, duplexs etc. You can make it carefully and neatly as long as you change nothing. What a boring way to spend time on this planet. What a waste of trees and iron. Hello there - anyone thought that maybe we might EXPERIMENT. And while I think of it, what do the clone makers do in their anechoic chambers anyhow, because they don't seem to be listening to pianos in there. Maybe the staff go in once a day just to hear their own heart beat, to check that they're still alive. Sorry Rich' I digressed just a tad. >They say this enhances >power and sustain in general. Only if you're half deaf. In fact, build a clean toned piano and those who are hard of hearing will prefer the noisy instrument. The slightly deaf seem to need the percussive font end on the tone to get definition into their deaf ears. I have had this happen. Some years ago a very fine, but very deaf, local pianist chose the noisier of the two available pianos for a CD (one piano was freshly rebuilt while the other was fit to be introduced to a box of matches - both Ds). When the resultant CD was released, several of the punters mentioned how ordinary the piano sounded. I knew it when we did the album. I just had to shut my ears and tune and try-to-voice the dinosaur. This problem, in my view, becomes a major factor with music colleges when it comes to choosing instruments. The younger, less deaf members of staff prefer a clean tone, while the usually older usually deafer heads of department prefer the all-string-noise version. A bit like tuners isn't, mostly it takes you so long to get the better gigs in town, that your hearing's shot by the time you get there - built in obsolescence I'd say. >The opposition says this is not so and that in >reality what you are setting up is a lot of string noise that becomes noiser >and noiser as time goes by. > >When the front duplex is well tuned with nice shinny new terminations and >strings and all is well and fine in Silver City...the piano can sound quite >nice. Can't agree with you at all here Richard. When we built our piano No. 001, we went to a great deal of trouble with the shape and hardness of the counterbearing bars, placed in front of the capo bar. For this piano, we positioned the counterbearing bars to obtain the shortest possible effective front duplex length. While the treble was on the whole very clean indeed, one note C#53 was an absolute disaster. Considering all the talk that floats about the ether on this subject, I decided to measure accurately the speaking length, and the front 'duplex' of the offending note. I was amazed to find that the speaking length was 333 mm and the front 'duplex' 33 mm - exactly 1/10. Well, if the theory of tuned and detuned duplexs was correct, changing the front length should eliminate the problem since it would effectively detune the duplex length away from the matching harmonic of the speaking length. Since moving the bar might cause another treble note to become tuned and noisy, I made a small short auxilliary bar for C#53 only, shaping it and setting the height to fit just in front of the original bearing bar (about 2mm in front). The result was astounding. The noises absolutely disappeared. It was at this point (during August last year after the Sydney Technicians convention - where No. 001 was exhibited) that I became absolutely convinced of the detuning idea. Our piano No. 003 was the first new piano built by us with a deliberately detuned font duplex system. The longest of the duplexs have just the slightest hint of noise, but still very clean. We will be setting the lengths to even shorter options when we change over to our own plate design for piano No. 006. >But I fail to see that such pianos do not sound nice with the detuned >duplex as well. This is from my experience absolutely beyond doubt. >Actually I prefer the later. But when the piano starts getting >worn the tuned duplex preforms poorly in my estimation... From day one in fact. >accenting string noises and creating some of its own that quite >frankly ruin the sound of a >piano. Perhaps this is why so many of the old style movables on S&S were being >moved around. Most likely both the manufacturer and the technicians were shooting in the dark. Poor technical service is no argument for retaining archaic design. If this were carried to its extreme, we'd all throw away our computers and get out the pen and paper again. No thank you ! >There still remains to be written the definitive treatise on the Front Duplex. What would be the use of writing a treatise on the subject anyhow. Most 90% or more would right it off as propaganda anyhow. No matter how carefully executed it might be. >Most of what has been published on the subject is either speculative or >declarative in nature, without support hard data to back up any assertions >made. Exactly, so let's all cut the speculation and rely more on our actual findings, as opposed to what we think we might find if we were to get up off our butt and actually do something. Isn't it fun being here ! Ron O -- Overs Pianos Sydney Australia ________________________ Web site: http://www.overspianos.com.au Email: mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au ________________________
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