What section of the piano did you conduct the experiment in: bass, midrange, treble? David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of John Delacour Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 12:43 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] Shank questions I don't recall any recent discussion on the question of hammer shanks and would be interested to hear others' experience. The immediate reason for this is that I have just begun an experiment with my Brinsmead concert grand. This now has new specially-made Abel 'Naturfilz' hammers with walnut cores and is sounding quite terrific but I want to spend time getting the ultimate out of it. In the 1890's Brinsmead fitted a shank made of a wood the colour of black walnut, which I have never identified properly, but this piano is earlier (ca. 1876) and has 7/32 maple shanks, very well selected. On lesser models they were still using cedar at this time. What I did today was to run a line of glue along the top of the shank and glue along the whole length of the shank bamboo kebab stick, lashing them together till the glue set. Before doing this I chose two adjacent notes that seemed to me to be sounding so similar as to be indistinguishable at first hearing -- of course the ear gets more critical as these experiments proceed. The increased stiffness of the doctored shank was, obviously, quite marked, and I will say nothing of the tonal difference I detected, first because I want to hear what you think and then I want to go forward with the experiment. Suffice it to say that I did notice an interesting difference in the behaviour of the two notes that I had originally selected for their similarity. Now Steinway were using round maple shanks well into the 20th century while many other makers were using Herburrger's octagonal pattern, also of hard maple. Nowadays many shanks, at least in Europe, are both octagonal and of hornbeam. Then there is the fashion for the oval shanks in the treble, which I have never been convinced was anything more than a fad. Perhaps you have views on this. Early in my career a Dutch technician recommended scalloping the underneath of the shanks in the treble, which would render them more flexible rather than less. I have never yet tested his theory, but it would be interesting. I'd like to hear your guess as to the difference my experiment might have made, but more importantly I'd like to hear what people have experienced more generally with different shank shapes and materials. It could be an interesting thread. I'm writing this to the old list because I see no change in the new set-up and find it quite unusable and full of errors. JD
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC