Problems

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, David,

I completely concur; and, that's with the understanding that there are
entirely too much of the kinds of structural and related problems that have
been discussed (again) recently on the list.

At the end of the day, how it comes out of the factory is how it comes out
of the factory.  We cannot get out what is not built in.  We must work with
what we get...until it is time to rebuild.  In the meantime, we cannot
expect the company to change what has been working (for them, anyway) for
over 150 years.  To paraphrase an old bromide, if the piano will not come
to us, we must go to the piano.

Best regards.

Horace


Quoting David Andersen <david at davidandersenpianos.com>:

>
> 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
>
>
>