Problems

[David Andersen]

On Dec 7, 2006, at 7:13 PM, Kent Swafford wrote:
> What of the soundboards that have forced the term "killer octave"  
> into our vocabulary?
> How does one polish the "diamond in the rough" that looks more like  
> a simple lump of coal?
> Kent

Obviously, board and any structure issues are a different story; much  
rarer, in my experience, than action issues.

A lot of tonal issues that people might think are board-related are  
actually mechanics and tone regulation-related.

If plucking strings in various sections of the piano produces the  
sound and resonance curve we desire, it's easy to tweak. Relatively.   
If the pluck test is bad, and the termination points are good, you've  
got a big problem.

I haven't seen a New York Steinway since the early '80's that was  
terrible all around---condemnable.

The vast majority of the Steinway problems I've seen in my practice  
for the last 20 or so years have been front-end problems---action and  
damper. When the action is balanced, regulated and the piano is tuned  
and voiced properly, a magical transformation takes takes---the piano  
starts to sing. The client is blown away. We've done this dozens of  
times on modern Steinway grands. I'd say the ratio of egregious  
problems in modern Steinways is around 20:1, front end to back end.  
YMMV.

David Andersen


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