At 5:25 pm +0000 12/6/07, Anne Acker wrote: >With one exception: I find that the better makes, properly set up, >and played by the sensitive player, have equally fast repetition. >Proving this will be part of an ongoing research project. There is no doubt about it. The English action with the addition of the Cary spring has many points of superiority over the French action including far faster and more reliable repetition. By far the greatest development of the English action was carried out by John Brinsmead and I am in the process of producing exact drawings and movies of the Brinsmead grand action. There is a single weakness in the English action and that is the impossibility of avoiding wear at the cushion, which can be quite rapid under heavy professional use and has the effect, as it would more slowly on an upright, of gradually increasing the touch weight and eventually making the piano unplayable unless the cushions are at first shimmed out and ultimately replaced. I have invented a modification that completely removes this weakness and this, and other interesting modifications, have enabled me to produce an action that is virtually free of friction. I have a working one-key model of this action here with me. Delighted at having solved this age-old problem, I spent a day a couple of years ago at the Patent Office in the British Library ordering up from the vaults huge tomes of old patents from Robert Stodart's original patent for the Backers action onwards. In the process I discovered a sketch in one of Brinsmead's patents that shows that he had considered something along the lines of my invention and added the sketch to the patent to cover himself without actually having developed it, since the drawing shows an arrangement that could not actually have worked and was never produced. Nevertheless I was rather pleased to discover that JB had touched on the solution. He must have forgotten about it or he would certainly eventually have arrived at the same modification as I have and incorporated it into all his grand actions. While actions were light and not required to repeat perfectly, the English action was durable and excellent. As increased tensions made necessary heavier hammers, repetition became a problem that could only be solved with the addition of some sort of spring, and while the Cary spring is the best sort of spring it brings with it the penalty of increased pressure and wear on the cushion that less good "pusher" springs do not. You are welcome to contact me off-list if you need any input into your research, since it is a subject I have researched quite deeply for quite a while. JD
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