Allen, It will be tremendously interesting to see the range and domain of answers to this post. Most of my (professional) life has been spent working on large pianos, and, I think that the most consistent thing about them is their lack of consistency. In thinking of longevity, I tend to think that, as a whole, your anonymous colleague is correct. But, this is a tremendous simplification. Particularly as to instrument which have been constantly _used_ as concert instruments (as opposed to those which happen to be of such and such a size), my sense is that the combination of actual use and issues best described as "Cartesian perceptions" combine with whatever may or may not be going on structurally to "prematurely" age a given instrument. Said another way, in the days before tax laws made depreciation so terribly attractive, there were sound (sorry), musical reasons why instruments were retired from full-time concert service. At a place like Oberlin, or any active performance institution, a given piano may experience 400+ performances in any semester. The only pianos which may exceed this are the ones actively in use in some "C&A" type bank. In these cases, the pianos are not just used, they are constantly pushed to their absolute limits. Thus, one must expect that everything about them wears accordingly. For example, I have long stressed to peformance venue-type clients the importance of conceiving of hammers and strings as disposable parts. With all of the tuning, voicing, shaping, etc., these are simply shot in 5 years or so. (Yes, I admit that many instruments go much longer. On the other hand, if these really are concert instruments, and they really are being maintained as such...) >From what you have given (below), I am not sure that I would start with bridge work. What kind of shape is the board in? When was the piano last restrung? (I think treble sections should be redone about every 2 years, depending on expectation of performance.) Don't laugh, but how do the two instruments compare visually? Is the currently preferred one "prettier", somehow? This is certainly _not_ to suggest that the bridge may not need attention - loose bridge pins?, poor notching?, etc., just that there may be more to the picture. For example, too much bearing will produce a "choked" quality tone just as quickly as too little... Idle thoughts from a currently swampy mind. Best to all. Horace At 12:37 PM 1/22/98 -0500, you wrote: >A colleague recently made the comment that concert grands don't seem to retain >good tonal characteristics for as many years as smaller pianos - his theory >being that because the soundboard is bigger it's sort of "hanging out there" >more with less overall support and vulnerable to weakening or losing it's >tonal character somehow for some reason. > >My interest in what other folks have to say about this is more than just >academic. One of our concert grands here "used to" have much more sustaining >quality than it does now, and over >the years has developed a kind of choked quality (in spite of recently >installed new hammers which I had high hopes would improve things) which has >relegated it to the status of "second-string" in the concert hall it's in >(which it shares with a fine sounding and much more popular piano. > >The other possibility we're considering is bridge work - recapping etc. But I >wanted to lob this concept out about concert grand longevity and see what >people think of the notion, and whether any of you have suspected (or >confirmed or maybe don't agree with) the theory. > >Thanks in advance, > >Allen Wright >Oberlin Conservatory >There is a > > > Horace Greeley Systems Analyst/Engineer Controller's Office Stanford University email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu voice mail: 650.725.9062 fax: 650.725.8014
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