tapping pins (wapin)

[Tim Coates]

Hi Ron,

Why not construct a piano with every other note on the piano bridge in a
Wapin configuration?  This would allow us to examine neighboring notes to
see if a note without Wapin
sounds any different from a note with Wapin.

The first attempt at such an endeavor was actually done at Baldwin around
1996.  Baldwin took a Chickering 410.  The bridge was constructed before the
assembly with an every
other note configuration.  Baldwin had no real R & D department at the
time.  The bridge was made in the factory by me, Michael Wathen, and was
later installed on a piano as it
came through the assembly line.  It sat finished for many months in the
Truman factory while the management tried to figure out how to test it.
About six months after it was
completed it was sent to the Cincinnati corporate showroom and placed on the
showroom floor amidst fifty to sixty other new pianos for sale.  It sat
there untuned and unattended
for several weeks until I found out it was there.  I pushed the management
to evaluate it.  They agreed that I would go to the showroom and spend a day
regulating and tuning.  No
voicing was allowed.  The next day a group of Baldwin employees checked it
out.  According to the testimony the listened to the every other note
configuration. Everyone agreed
that they could hear no difference.  So the whole project died right then
and there.  There was no effort made to test anything.

 During the same period, I made my own every other note piano as a
technician at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. I
modified a Baldwin M.  I used a HP
Dynamic Signal Analyzer to look at the data among the differing notes.  I
found nothing that set the Wapin notes apart from the non-Wapin notes.  Nor
could I distinguish
anything aurally.   I dropped this every other note approach as a dead end.

 In retrospect I think of all the improvements made by piano designers and
builders throughout the centuries.  Very few have supporting clear
scientific evidence that quantifies the
effect of whatever improvement is in question.  Where are downbearing
experiments.  How about an every other note downbearing experiment.  I am
willing to bet that you would
get anything worthwhile in the way of empirical scientific justification.
Think of an every other note Steinway hammers versus Abel hammers, or Roslau
versus Mapes wire.

 Finally, I rest assured that many efforts by a multitude of experts over
many years has failed to produce the scientific justification of why a
Stradivarius sounds better than any
other violin of expert craftsmanship.

 Michael Wathen
Wapin Co., LLP

Ron Nossaman wrote:

> >>Hello,
> >>     The few Wapinized pianos I have played excelled in both power,
> >> sustain, and especially clarity.
> >>-Mike Jorgensen
> >
> >But the unrepentant objectivist asks, "Where is the control in the
> >experiment? What would these same pianos, rebuilt by the same rebuilder,
> >have sounded like with conventional bridge pinning?
> >
> >David Skolnik
>
> That's always been the question - hence the suggestions from various folk
> for a piano with every other unison Wapinized.
>
> Ron N