This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment Hi Sarah, thanks for catching on this, I hope this will open a nice thread. No I look for that old helmet of mine ! Isaac PS Indeed hammers in the treble does not relate to string mass at all, certainly for facility reasons. I recall little have been experimented on the ration hammer mass/unison mass, but I've heard of some studies . My questioning is that on some particular designs is not the evening of the break taking in account the jump in hammer mass and strings mass if exists - or not ? (even by trial and error) Bernhard stated that the longer hammers in the bass are less efficient in a grand and create a noticeable loss in power if compared with verticals, also. In that regard, adding weight to the first plain wire hammers, should exacerbate that effect, that was may be the concern I noticed on the Steinway I talked the weight off (no certitude there, of course, was a few years ago, many things have changed since then !). As a tuner/technician, I sometime find more easy to even the heaviness perception -that is so subjective as linked to tone- working the tone (voicing and regulation eventually) but we have little mastering of the basic tonal output power (strings/soundboard/hammer mass), only how efficiency these possibilities are employed. BTW on another subject , I recall having tuned a grand D Steinway to "mask" or absorb totally the attack noise (it is possible) . The pianists have find the tone very smooth and even, but it was lacking power and totally dynamic, and did not allow nuances enough (a smooth singing tone with little dynamics, not bugly but not interesting for music). Now I energize the attack so the impact serve tone while it is less masked . The way it transforms in ringing is where is all the "secret" of a good tone. Best regards. Isaac P.S I'll be unsubscribing for a while, the list is taking too much of my time when I participate. I'll be back certainly. Best to anyone, I wish you a good beginning of the school days. Isaac - ----Message d'origine----- De : pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org]De la part de Sarah Fox Envoyé : dimanche 22 août 2004 07:31 À : Pianotech Objet : SW heresy? Hi all, Thanks for the advice about techniques to even out the SW curve! That should give me a variety of techniques to use/combine in order to even out the jags. But the question is one of what my target curve should *really* be. Hmmmm.... My thoughts: The unmodified SW curve is obviously very linear. (Yes, I know what linear means. I "minored" in mathematics, sort of -- except that my U. didn't officially recognize minors). Stanwood's curves, OTOH, are all concave downwards. I was advised off list that I shouldn't force the hammers to artificially conform to a standardized Stanwood curve but to simply even out the jags to make the action smooth from bottom to top. There's something to be said for this idea. But as I got to thinking about the SW curves, I was wondering, where do they REALLY come from? That is, where does the shape come from? I suspect the hammer manufacturing people might be able to enlighten me as to this. (Ray???) I'm *guessing* that the felt is denser than the molding, and when the hammer becomes skinnier, it loses more felt than molding, resulting in a more precipitous dropoff in weight at the higher end. This would occur with a constant hammer length and a linear variation in hammer and molding (and felt) width. Am I anywhere close on this idea??? Contrast this function with other functions that might actually relate to optimal hammer mass: String length and mass both decrease with the note number, with a function that is concave upwards. Note frequency increases with a function that is concave upwards. Note period (inverse of frequency) increases with a function that is concave upwards. The Stanwood curve seems rather meaningless with regard to any of these functions. For instance, it might be good to match hammer mass to string mass by some proportion. Right? As the scale goes up, string length and mass approach an asymptote of zero. Therefore, shouldn't hammer mass approach an asymptote of zero? Instead, the curve starts taking a dive in the treble. If the scale went up well past 88, hammer mass would eventually crash to zero. Because these curves do not have the same form, the relationship between hammer and string mass is anything but constant. That doesn't make sense. So is this something that is the way it is just because of tradition -- because the cauls are built that way, and that's what ya' get? Now that I look at my linear SW curve (with jags), I'm wondering if this isn't REALLY a closer match to something meaningful (like string mass) than the idealized Stanwood curves. Any thoughts, y'all? Peace, Sarah ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/51/e0/5f/ed/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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