Key Leads and Inertia

[Richard Brekne]

Stephen Birkett wrote:

> John wrote:
> >... This means that all of the effort taken to get the action even
> >is wasted if the pianist plays with the pedal down.
>
> Do you really mean "down" in the above? I'm still curious to know
> whether static balancing is supposed to be done with damper lifters
> factored in or out.

Come on guys... UW and DW have been done with the action out of the
piano for a hundred years now. And as for Stanwoods measurements, since
the individual levers are taken out of the context of the action to
begin with I kinda think its a safe bet this is all  done without taking
into consideration the weight of the dampers.

Adding that weight later and independant has been the way things have
been done forever. But as I said in my last on this matter, Stanwood
does provide a way of evening those weights out as well.

> What John says above implies balancing is to be
> done with the dampers factored IN, i.e. in the piano with the foot
> off the pedal. Is this rule general, or optional, or did John mean
> pedal UP in the sentence above?
>

I think what John was implying was that the Stanwood system is not worth
bothering with. That seems to be the direction he goes with most of his
comments relative to touchweight balance. As a by-product of that, he
did point out something well known, but not much addressed in
discussions about touch weight, namely the extra weight affect of the
dampers.

I think the reason for this (real concern) is that there seems to be a
general tendancy by piano techs to avoid dampers to begin with, and
secondly the grand damper system requires at least a minimum amount of
force by the dampers to the strings, and more then that has
tradtitionally been seen as a bad idea so the defacto range employed has
been historically rather narrow. Springs havent been a big item in this
connexion since Herz did away with them in Erards origional version.

But by all means... dampers figure into the equation somewhere, and
rather abrubtly too in most cases.


> Stephen
> --

RicB

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html
http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html