Silencing a piano

[Isaac OLEG SIMANOT]

Hello Paul


The pads and cups, while isolating (more or less efficiently) the piano from
the floor, will be very efficient in fact, because it reduce the solid
transmission by the floor, the walls, mostly of the bass frequencies.
I have experiments made in a 3 floor house where a piano was installed at
the 3d floor (vertical), and the girl had a friend (piano player too) living
at the 1st floor.

We install under the feet caster cups, and a special material under them ( a
material used in the industry to reduce or stop the floor vibrations caused
by machines) .
This material (many trade exists) may be corresponding with the weight you
load on it, so for a vertical it can be  about 100 120 pound resistance to
be efficient)

Then the girl plays the piano, and I wend downstairs to listen. The sound
was changed as she use the muffler (Celeste) while playing.

Depending of the kind of floor, suspended or solid, the effect can be more
or less noticeable, but even a thin gum material under the casters will help
(even in the room you notice immediately that the basses are better
sounding) amazing on wood floors.

In France, some companies specialized in sound annihilation use to sell
special casters for pianos, grand or verticals. These are mostly sandwiches
of different material that may stop to be passing thru.

Hope that helps.

Regards.

Isaac OLEG

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : owner-pianotech@ptg.org [mailto:owner-pianotech@ptg.org]De la part
> de larudee@pacbell.net
> Envoyé : dimanche 28 octobre 2001 19:32
> À : piana@topica.com; Pianotech
> Objet : Re: Silencing a piano
>
>
> This is an old thread, but you might be interested in how it
> turned out.  Since
> the idea was to reduce the sound being transmitted to the
> neighbor downstairs
> and not necessarily the total sound production, the first step
> was to make felt
> pads out of hammer felt trimming using the two-glue method
> pioneered by Susan
> ("Tuglu") Kline and place them under matching wood caster cups
> sold by Schaff.
> I also ordered the acoustic foam baffles for the underside from
> Judi Edwards.
> I'm pretty sure the baffles will have more effect than the pads
> and cups, but
> between the two they will hopefully do the trick.
>
> Paul Larudee
>
>