Helper springs

[Bill Ballard]

At 4:32 PM -0700 6/14/03, David Andersen wrote:
>  > From: Bill Ballard <yardbird@vermontel.net>
>Hopefully the performance shortcomings of helper springs can be demonstrated
>in trials an engineer would be happy with.
>>
>>  Bill Ballard RPT
>>  NH Chapter, P.T.G.
>>
>Uh...why would it satisfy me or my clients, the composers, artists, serious
>players to have a trial an engineer woould be happy with?

Hi, David. Yes, I agree that's the reason we're doing this work, the 
pianists and the music they make. And if you think that constructing 
rigorous studies of the behavior of helper springs doesn't have 
anything to do with that, I'll agree.

However, the purpose was a very narrow one, to explore the helpers. A 
purely mechanical matter, and although it could possibly have 
produced improvements the musicians would find and enjoy, that wasn't 
the reason I was proposing it.

I have no vested interest in helpers. All I know about magnets, I've 
learned on this list. I haven't had any bad reports from pianists of 
helper springs altering the action's performance. Actually what I'd 
like to do is turn up the differences between them. They're both 
continuously variable, they both bring to the equation a force which 
is independent of the mass-based forces. Springs fade, and I bet 
magnets do too. And right now, we've got magnets working both ends of 
the stroke. Maybe you could make something like the two-speed 
transmission which was mentioned in this thread last week.

But you're right, David, we're missing the real value of a piano if 
we look at it through a microscope. No better set-up to test the 
response of pianists than what you've suggested.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"All God's Children got Rhythm"
     ...........Ivy Anderson in "A Day at the Races"
+++++++++++++++++++++