[CAUT] Steinway D damper quirks

[Ed Sutton]

John-

This harmonic after ring on F2 is usually caused by a lateral wobbling of 
the damper head. To test, lightly touch the side (not the top) of the 
damper, and the harmonic will stop. I believe you'll find that it is the 8th 
partial, and that the vertical damper wire is at exactly one eigth of the 
string length, so it forms an axis and lets the string vibrate.  It will be 
even more disturbing after a staccato F5.

This problem will appear after the piano has been tuned, so the tuner may be 
blamed for messing up the F5 damper when in fact he is guilty of tuning too 
good a unison at F2

If this is the case, there is a quick fix: Mistune one of the strings to 
beat about 1 bps at the 8th partial. This way the strings will be out of 
phase at the damper head, and will push against each other to stop the 
wobble!  The very slight mis-tuning (1 beat every 8 seconds at F2) will help 
with the voicing over the bass break. It will make a pretty good imitation 
of a wound trichord unison.

Ed Sutton

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Minor" <jminor at uiuc.edu>
To: "caut" <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 12:09 AM
Subject: [CAUT] Steinway D damper quirks


>I recently replaced a set of dampers on a 10 year old Steinway D in the 
>small living room of an accomplished pianist and had great difficulty with 
>a few felts dampening completely. The first note in the treble, #21, has a 
>nasty harmonic that I was unable to completely remove, no matter what 
>configuration of placement of the felt.  The other major problem note was 
>the lowest trichord in the bass. The felt just did not want to settle 
>between the thick windings. We tried to determine if the problem was caused 
>by sympathetic harmonics off of other notes, but ruled this out on these 
>problems. I was using NY Steinway felts. I would appreciate any help on 
>this.
>
> We also discovered definite  after-ring from the duplex scale in the 
> tenor, which I will "correct" with stringing braid when I return. This 
> ring may be  desirable in a large hall, but in a small living room it's 
> too much.
>
> John Minor
> University of Illinois