Vertical-vs-Grand action.

[Mark Schecter]

Hi, Ed.

I completely agree with your points about vertical touch weight, and 
would extend them to grands. I have added binder clips on one vertical, 
a Yamaha U1, and two grands, a very old Steinway with DW in the 30's, 
and a Hamburg O. In all three cases, the players were very happy with 
the change, and found it to improve their sense of control of dynamics. 
It seemed to put the effort level required for full expression into the 
comfort range of the player. When too little effort is required to 
achieve forte', then extra effort is required to control pianissimo, 
although it's a different kind of effort than when the action is too heavy.

For those considering trying this, note that you can reduce the amount
of strike weight added by moving the weight closer to the hammer center.
This also allows you to add weight to only a part of the action,
tapering in the effective weight by setting the weights along an angled
line that moves gradually farther from the center toward the hammer.

An additional benefit of the binder clips is that their quick
reversability allows the player to feel good about trying the experiment
with no great investment of technician's time or energy ($), and no big 
leap of faith required. The interesting thing in my three cases is that 
up to now, none of the three have wanted to remove the weights, and the 
total time of use is about six piano-years. Also, the players are all 
very advanced, and if there were any problems with noise or slipping or 
whatever, they would have uncovered them.

-Mark Schecter

ed440 at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Jim Ellis wrote:  Depending upon what you want the piano to sound
> like and to do, there
>> is an optimum hammer "weight" (mass) as related to the mass and
>> tension of the string.  There are all sorts of trade-off's here.
>> More weight, more mass, longer dwell time, more relative
>> fundamental tone, better soft-playing control under some conditions
>> but at the expense of slower repetition, heavier feel, etc.  Less
>> weight, less mass, shorter dwell, faster response, brighter tone
>> assuming same felt hardness, etc, etc. There is no one combination
>> that's either good or bad.  It depends upon what you want from the
>> piano.
>> 
>> Ed, if this is material you are working up for a JOURNAL article or
>> column, you need to tell us up front.  Jim
> 
> Jim-No plans for an article on this. I'm just responding to earlier
> questions and posts about touchweight in vertical pianos. My points
> were 1) in some vertical pianos, an adjustment to hammer weight can
> make a great improvement in the expressive capacity of the piano 2)
> This can't be calculated with static up and down weight formulas, but
> it is fairly easy to add a litle hammer weight and play the piano to
> test the result. I appreciate your comments! Ed Sutton
> 
>