[CAUT] My take on them, (was The "new" S&S Hammers).

[David Love]

I just want to comment on one aspect of this.  Two of my customers come to
mind.  Both have Steinway B's and they are basically the same vintage.  In
fact, I rebuilt them both.  Both customers love their pianos and I have the
emails and correspondence to back that up.  But if I were to swap pianos
between them, they would both be unhappy.  The reasons are pretty obvious.
One of them likes a very firm touch dynamic.  His piano has a BW of 44
grams.  The other customer likes it very light.  The balance weight there is
34 grams.  The one who likes it heavier also likes the piano very brilliant,
even edgy with power being the primary goal.  The other party likes the
piano very dark without any stridence or even any pinging in the treble.
Both are very good pianists and play quite expressively.  What does that
tell us?  The range into which both of these pianos fall is broad but not
exceptional.  Were I to have targeted the manufacturers straight line target
both would be unsatisfied and the pianos, to them, would be just mediocre.
While the pianos are quite different I wouldn't say that either one is
un-Steinway like.  They simply represent either end of the spectrum of what
the pianos can produce.  While an employee of a manufacturer must abide by
the requirements dictated by the marketing department, we, as technicians
and (hopefully) artists are not bound by such constraints.   

 

Customizing pianos and using our own artistic sensibilities is risky in some
ways.  You take a chance and expose yourself to criticism by taking the
initiative to do something different.  But there is a relationship between
risk and reward.  Personally, I am not satisfied with just delivering what
the manufacturer recommends.  In many ways it's safer.  To my customers I
can simply say, "that's how the piano is supposed to be according to my
training".  In the end, however, in order to satisfy your customers, you
need to be willing to step out of the box and exercise your own artistic
judgment coupled with good communication skills to deliver what they want.
After all, it will be your customer who plays the piano, not the C&A
department at Steinway.  That is often what will differentiate you from
others and, btw, shouldn't preclude you from giving it to them by the book
either-if that's what they want.  

 

Neither, btw, should you be concerned about manufacturer identity.  No
matter what you do, you will not turn a Yamaha into a Steinway or a Steinway
into a Yamaha.  Overriding design differences will take care of that for
you.   

 

David Love
davidlovepianos at comcast.net
www.davidlovepianos.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
Tanner
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 1:50 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] My take on them, (was The "new" S&S Hammers).

 

 

On Sep 15, 2007, at 12:42 PM, Richard Brekne wrote:





All this goes back to my origional post on this matter.  Get your own voice
and voicing style down pat.  And select the hammers that YOU prefer working
with to get it.  It is not IMHO even remotely neccessary to adhere to
someone elses idea of what any given piano should sound like.  The window
for acceptable voicing is actually quite large... which means for every 10
pianists you wow.... there are at the very least another 10 who will be less
then impressed.

My take.. :)

 

 

Ric,

I'd like to ask a question regarding this philosophy:  

 

What if the factory installers took this approach and advice?  What
identity, if any, would then be associated with the NY Steinway or any other
manufacturer where there was no control over the manufacturing process?
What then, could be attributed to the instrument that would make it a NY
Steinway or a Hamburg Steinway or a Bosendorfer or a Bechstein or a Yamaha
or a Kawai?  What would the name on the plate and fallboard mean?  What
would that name be worth?

 

I don't think anyone on this list can argue with the idea that most all of
us are accomplished artists in our very own right.  We each have earned
reputations for our work that has built our careers.  We all take pride in
our work -- our art, our <<brand>> if you will.

 

But in this area, here is where I take my pride out of the equation.  It is
not my name on the fallboard.  I have not been building pianos since 1853 or
whenever.  I have not spent 150 plus years developing an identity that is
uniquely mine, that has come to represent something to the world.  When a
performer walks up to a piano with a certain name on the fallboard, he or
she has a certain expectation for what kind of sound and performance it has
based on that name and their previous experience with other examples of it.
If a performer finds a NY Steinway, there is a certain expectation that
comes from that.  If one finds Hamburg, there is another expectation.  If
one finds Yamaha, Kawai, Bechstein, Bosendorfer, etc., again each has built
a reputation for something different and I personally had nothing to do with
it.  

 

With that in mind, I don't think I have one iota of credibility to infuse my
own personal taste to make a sweeping change of the tonal/response
characteristics of any manufacturer's product.  That product is the very
identity of the company, and I don't feel I have the right to infuse my own
preferences beyond working with the parts that make up the formula of that
identity, whether it be an improvement in my opinion or not.  So, with my
limited experience and knowledge, I try to rely on the
maintenance/rebuilding processes -tone building/voicing in this case- as
taught by that manufacturer so that it maintains or mimics as closely as
possible, the character of tone/response - identity - that manufacturer has
built a reputation for.  If that means learning how to use NY Steinway
hammers and lacquer, so be it.  If that means stabbing 100,000 holes in a
new set of hard pressed Yamaha hammers, so be it.  It isn't my name on the
fallboard, and I don't feel I have the right to choose the kind of sound
that piano should have just because I prefer a different method.  It is the
artist/buyer/owner who has the expectation based on the name on the
fallboard, whether I like it or not.  To change the overall characteristic
of the instrument to suit my preferences does injustice to both the
buyer/owner/artist and the owner of the name on the fallboard.

 

Yes.  The NY Steinway hammer, properly lacquered, creates a different palate
of tonal offerings from any other hammer.  That is NY Steinway's signature.
Other hammers can sound "nice" and "pretty" in a Steinway.  But that sound
is missing something.  It isn't just about loud and soft or bright or
mellow.  It is about the felty strength of the lioness gently carrying her
cubs in her mouth to the graceful, mysterious stalking to the raucous,
meaty, bloody gore of the lion's kill.  It is the romantic sensuality of
estrogen and the chest beating insensitivity of testosterone.  One cannot
describe with words the description of the actual sound, but you know when
it is there and when it isn't.

 

And most every performer I've worked with knows.  I can't tell you how many
conversations I've had with artists regarding expectations from a Steinway
that have contained the phrase "you know what I mean".  That is not a
question.  It is a description of tone.

 

Viva la difference?  Yes.  If not an affordability issue, different tone and
touch characteristics are why many choose other manufacturer's pianos.  And
agreed, Steinway has a reputation (perhaps overexaggerated by promoters of
its competitors) of manufacturing pianos with slightly different
personalities.  And it isn't that the personalities vary so awfully much --
there is usually a strong resemblance between all of them.  But the
differences don't occur because one installer in the factory chooses to use
Tokiwa shanks and Wurzen hammers and another Renner shanks, with assist
wippens and Abel hammers, and yet another Hamburg wippens, NY pre-84 shanks
and Isaac hammers.  They occur simply because all of them are imperfect in
slightly different ways, despite the increasingly reliable consistency of
the stock factory parts.

 

On Sep 19, 2007, at 11:40 AM, johnsond wrote:



  I'm not so sure I care for this new "process improvement" of pre-soaking,
as it takes too much of the tone building process out of my control (in this
last case, all of it) but we can deal with it if necessary.

 

I'm not trying to be crass, but I really don't think it is up to us whether
we care for it or not.  I see it as NY Steinway making an effort to protect
their own identity and reputation from technician "error", as they have
called it in reference to teflon bushings.  They have that right. They have
earned it.  The pre-soaking takes our own personal preferences out of the
equation to an extent and puts the hammer on a path to something that with
little more work should produce the sound they want instruments with their
name on them to produce.  If nothing else, it gets the note in the box that
erases all doubt that Steinway hammers do indeed require lacquer.  Steinway
is taking back control of the tone building process.  It is an attempt to
make it easier for us to achieve that signature NY sound if we are only open
minded to it.  

 

It wasn't teflon bushings that created Steinway's reputation for clicky
actions during those years.  It was technicians in the field who didn't know
how to work with them.  But that was what allowed other manufacturers to
make claims that Steinway was somehow inferior and stake claims to market
share.  If not for their tradition rich reputation and Steinway's C&A
artists working with world class performers using bona fide Steinway
techniques during those times, it is very possible Steinway could have wound
up on the chopping block over it.  Is that what we want?  Look, they're
trying to help us out guys.  Let's at least listen to what they have to say
without our eyes closed and our hands over our ears.

 

If technicians have a legitimate complaint about the quality of their
finished parts, that is one thing.  But what right do we have to complain
about the quality of Steinway parts if it is our own ignorance of their
processes, or infusion of our own individual preferences that is the cause
of the dissatisfaction?  Steinway's technicians seem to use the parts quite
well for the world's most demanding performers, in the factory, in the C&A
department and in the restoration center (which, by the way, I was told
almost always uses the same prehung hammers/shanks they send us with rare
exception).  If I don't know how to make Steinway parts work on a Steinway,
how is that Steinway's fault?  If I can't make them work (or just don't want
to), what does that say to my client about my competence?  Blame Steinway?
Wanna see some eyebrows go up in a hurry around here?

 

I think it is a step in the right direction for them.  For their brand.  For
their identity.  For their future.

 

And ours.

 

My thoughts,

Jeff

 

 

Jeff Tanner, RPT

University of South Carolina

 





 

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