I doubt seriously I will be meeting the Mæstro any time soon :)... this is another situation where somebody heard about something the Mæstro does to make the touch artificially lighter. One response I got on CAUT makes kind of sense and is a real possibility. A 1-2 mm thick felt piece is temporarily inserted under the keys on the key rest felt. Essentially simply takes care of the first 1mm or so of key dip. Stopping and thinking about this... you move the jack angle slightly in... perhaps a tad lowering of the starting ratio there... you shorten the key dip and blow... which could by some pianists feasibly be experienced as a lightening of touchweight... We are not after a quiter sound per se... as in the una corda suggestions here... tho I get where you two are coming from... nice thinking really. More a combination of an overall sensation of a lighter touch... lighter response picture.... as in kind of simulating older piano touch styles. Another idea,... probably less likely as an answer to what the Mæstro does... is running 0.3 mm thick shimming paper stripes just back of the balance rail pins. This would definitely lighten the touchweight because the ratio will be lowered. Still... tho its quick and dirty... and easily reversable... I gotta wonder if a pianist would lift the top action, remove all the keys.. and insert these strips. Besides they arent felt and thats reportedly what he uses. Thanks for the good thoughts. I'm going to try the restfelt extender idea in the next few days on a couple pianists around here to see what they think. Cheers RicB Your comment jogs a dormant brain cell: perhaps this "strip of felt" adjustment is inserted at the action return block to beef up the felt very slightly, to achieve a continual slight una chorda effect. Or even between the bass cheek block & keyframe, if the "fix" is particularly quick & dirty.Obviously,a properly voiced instrument shouldn't require that kind of "hack", so I don't think Ric needs to worry about it (and he can certainly ask about it Maestro Pletnev when he sees him -- obviously I'm just guessing!). Patrick On Jan 8, 2008 2:27 PM, Brad Lehman <bpl at umich.edu> wrote:
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