[CAUT] Wapin Installation at Brandon University

[Michael Wathen]

We'll Tim you twisted my arm.  Let me set the record straight about my
participation in Lists and the PTG,etc.

First, I am a retired technician. I no longer tune for clientele. I left the
University of Cincinnati (CCM)in 1998. I left to pursue a new career: high
school mathematics teacher.  You can visit my website to get an idea of how
and what I'm teaching. You can even take one of my self-grading quizzes to
see how much you remember from your high school days. The web site is:

http://homelink.cps-k12.org/teachers/wathenm/


With regards to Wapin...

Trying to convince the piano industry of anything proves to be next to
impossible.  They are truly a self absorbed lot.  Each manufacturer believes
that they have the best, they are doing the best, and that they and they
alone understand the market. The best example of that type of thinking is
illustrated by the demise of Baldwin. The piano industry as a whole is
clearly on a slide and things are getting worse not better.

At one time I believed whole-heartedly that the industry would jump at the
invention.  But after repeated engagements and then disengagements by
industry officials I decided that it was too emotionally of an exhausting
venture to fight this uphill battle.  I felt that both the industry and the
technicians seemed to perceive me as some kind of heretic.  So, I just bowed
out and have pretty much left the business to Tim Coates and Tim Geinert to
promote to technicians.  They have done a far better job promoting it than I
could possibly do and I am grateful to them for doing this.

Now, I believe a read a post by RicB. It has the best statement yet about
the balance between subjectivity and science.  When I comes right down to it
there is no way to prove subjective quality.  We can no more scientifically
prove that a Stradivarius is superior to a new high-end maker's instrument
than we can prove that McDonalds is better than Burger King. The only thing
that we can do, has been done several times; and that is prove that there is
a qualitative difference.

Probably our best experiment was conducted by Robert Coleman.  Robert is Jim
Coleman's brother. He was a former NASA scientist who specialized in finite
element analysis. He helped developed the original system that NASA used to
analyze and look for changes in the ceramic heatshield tiles on the space
shuttles.

I agreed to install Wapin on his home piano if he were to do a before and
after test. He conducted his analysis but looking at the change of one note.
There was a clear difference. He produced an array of graphs that
illustrated this.  Unfortunately, you would have to understand finite
element analysis to in order to fully grasp the meaning of the graphs. If
you would like to see a reduced collection of these graphs you my email me
privately and I will sent them to you as jpegs.

There is another person named Galembo(Russian)who did an important study.
His original hypothesis was that the subjective quality in a piano is a
function of inharmonicity. People will choose the grand piano as superior in
quality because they can   perceive the inharmonicity advantage that can
only be found on instruments with longer strings. This hypothesis proved to
be wrong. He was able to show that it was a richer harmonic spectrum that
helped people make the distinction.  This was good news for Wapin since we
have showed time and time again that Wapin provides a richer harmonic
spectrum.  This might explain one claim that Wapin makes a smaller piano
sound like it is a larger piano.

Interesting to hear a report from Jim Busby on one of the very first
installations of Wapin: The BYU installation.  That was done by Vince
Mrykalo. I remember that he looked at digital pictures that had been
privately posted on our web site. This was 1996 and most people were only
slightly familiar with the web at that point.  So we have had a Wapin
website for quite a while now.  It's good to hear that this installation is
still serving well.

 Okay, I'm tired now.  I'll take a break.

I'll be looking forward to reports from Mark's event.

Michael Wathen
Cincinnati, Ohio