Ric Your comments remind me of one of my clients with a son who was a pretty decent budding pianist. They had a Wurlitzer spinet for his practice piano doe many years and they finally decided it was time to get him a better instrument. I was able to hook them up with a nice used Steinway M, a pretty decent home piano and a definite upgrade from the Wurly. They called me out after it was in the home for a few weeks. Seems the boy didn't like the way it felt or sounded. I told them to give it awhile, let him get used to the difference, and he might even end up preferring the Steinway over the Wurly. Methinks a lot of "personal preference" boils down to what kind of piano someone is used to playing. This son of my client was used to playing the Wurly, and that became normative for him, it was how pianos were supposed to sound and respond. That's okay, people are certainly entitled to love the sound and touch of their Wurlies. And pianists who are used to playing flexing keys might think that is a wonderful feel. But they might, actually, become better pianists if they learned to play pianos without flexing keys. I think this all makes it even more incumbent on us to encourage people to upgrade their child's practice instrument. Face it: 6-10 years of practicing on a piece of crap dulls the senses and is definitely not conducive to developing good technique or a good appreciation for tone. I had a pow wow with my 11 year old daughter's piano teacher. The teacher was remarking how well Lydia "got it", she could hear it more than the teacher's other students. I tune for a lot of her other students. Most of them practice on crap. Lydia has a nice little Baldwin grand with a wonderful tone and very nice action. I dunno. Maybe it's her practice piano. Of course, maybe it's genetic! :-) Dean Dean May cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN 47802 -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Brekne Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 5:30 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Flexy S&S D Keys Hi Del and Terry, Terry, how did you ascertain that there was <<too much>> flex in the keys ? Del, what is wrong with calling a spade a spade ? Honestly folks... any <<improvement>> in an actions performance is wholly a result of the users reaction to the change. There is no inherent improvment.... only a change in configuration. Thing is that for every person that would equate this change with an <<improvement>> there are probably at least that many if not 10 times as many who would not. You make the action stiffer when you make it stiffer... goes without saying... if thats a good thing for the pianist in question fine... if its not...what ...are we going to get all down on the guy and snub our noses at him ? Why not just call a change a change and leave it at that .... along with making it clear to the customer what the change will do... pros and cons. Because there is always pros and cons. I'd like to know what the criteria for judging these particular keys to have to much flex are ? Terry ? Cheers RicB Have him or her go back to the August and December 1996 Journals and read the two articles I wrote about energy losses in piano actions. In one of those articles I described how to improve (I realize the idea of "improving" anything to do with the piano is subjective so perhaps I should just say "change") these keys. Basically I removed the so-called Accelerated Action "rockers" and replaced them with normal thin felt punchings. I then used the space gained to accommodate maple plates of equal thickness (4 mm comes to mind but you should check) glued to the bottom of the keys. Did wonders to "change" the performance of the action and the piano. Del
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