J. Delacour Piano

[John Delacour]

At 10:42 am +0200 15/9/06, Ric Brekne wrote:

>I thought the sound was quite interesting... Definitely not the 
>sound we are accustomed too... but pleasing anyways.

The highly compressed MP3 format gives only a partial impression of 
the sound.  No professional musician or piano tuner who has played it 
has been able to tell it doesn't have a normal soundboard.  A few of 
the comments I have had from professionals are:

It sounds like a piano a foot longer.
You don't expect so much power in a 5'2" piano
It's frighteningly easy to tune
The attack is wonderful
It's taking me a while to get used to this sustain
Steinway would kill for a treble like that!
The treble reminds me of a really good Steinway.

>In a conservative piano world ... I wonder how easy it will be to 
>sell this to the market ?  Perhaps if the thing is far more stable 
>tuning wize he may have some leverage.  Otherwise, it may be 
>difficult for him

It is indeed very stable, and that is in spite of the fact that I 
took less pains in the construction than I might have done if it had 
not been intended merely as a proof of concept.  I had originally not 
intended even to do a full action and keyboard rebuild, except for 
new hammers.  In the event it was so successful that it would have 
been a shame to keep it merely as a rough demo. For the same reason I 
also used the original bridges, which give a string scale I would not 
myself have designed.  The next job will be a 6'9" piano made to far 
lower tolerances and with an excellent scale, which will be directly 
comparable to another piano rebuilt with the original (perfect) 
soundboard.

JD