heavy Steinway action

[Delwin D Fandrich]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
Re: heavy Steinway action
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: David Andersen=20
  To: Pianotech=20
  Sent: June 03, 2003 11:25 AM
  Subject: Re: heavy Steinway action



  Wim, don't be naive, with all due respect.  Steinway has been riding =
on their iconic name, making from average to below average to truly =
horrible actions for four decades or more.  The wierd paradox, the real =
head-scratcher, is what our friend Mr. Brekne said in a post earlier =
today----that, in truth, the Hamburg Steinway factory do the best job in =
the world at making consistently fine & balanced actions.

  This has always seemed, to me, the definition of insanity and =
laziness, and hubris, and contempt for the American player.

  It would be relatively easy for NY to adopt the Hamburg protocols, or  =
some "New York-ized" version of them, but they don't.

All of this reminds of the Model M I encountered early in the 1970s. The =
owner, a woman in her 60s was complaining of the action's "heavy" touch. =
Several technicians from the store selling the piano had already been =
out to look at the piano and could find nothing wrong. After looking at =
the piano myself and measuring key downweight--a fairly uniform 52 to 48 =
grams, bass to treble--I spent a bit of time talking with the owner. =
Seems she only had a problem when she was playing fast passages with =
lots of quick repetition. On pulling the action I discovered 9 leads in =
the bass keys decreasing to three or four in the treble. On calling the =
factory I was informed that since the downweight was dead on factory =
specs there was "nothing they could do because there is not problem." =
That was my baptism into action geometry. Moving the stack, re-hanging =
the hammers and relocating the capstans pretty much took care of the =
non-problem. And this on a one or two year old piano.

Sigh.

Del

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/69/30/af/e2/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--