[CAUT] VOICES and other Steinway stuph

[A440A at aol.com]

Greetings, 

             Whew,  lotta talk about hammers, manufacturers, and opinions.  
It is obvious that there is no one voice out there. 
  To address a couple of individual things: 

   The Nossman B at Rochester was one of the finest sounding pianos I have 
ever heard.  It sounded remarkably like one of my older customer's 1936 B, which 
was equipped with new factory hammers in 1949 and only lightly played since.  
Both have great sustain and clarity. 
 
Inre the Overs piano, someone wrote:  

>     To give the perspective of my own personal taste to that opinion, my

> favorite piano in that showcase was Ron Overs', hands down. <<

     I couldn't stand that piano the first time I played it. It sounded thin 
and stringy.  THEN, as the days went past and Ron voiced the piano,  I heard 
the tone fill out, becoming round and full, without losing the edge.  The tone 
became malleable and big. (more about that, later).  It was great to hear the 
development of tone from the raw hammer to the fully voiced one.  The 
difference is night and day and by the time the convention ended, that piano had 
everything one could want in a piano!  

 
     It is simple to make a piano "monochrome".  The raw beginner can make a 
piano mush, or glass.  There are venues that call for these extremes, ie, a 
voice teacher in a hard-floored studio wants her Steinway M to be voiced so 
softly that there is virtually no brilliance at all below FF, which she never 
reaches.  In contrast, the majority of country recording studios here want the 
piano to be so brassy that the tone doesn't change, only the volume. You wouldn't 
believe what some of the studio pianos sound like, (think tin can+gravel.) 
Good session players play in an extremely narrow range, pegging the VU meters 
dead on the same number all the way through the track. It is easier to get it on 
tape that way.  Since there is also a bass guitar, and the drum sounds, 
competition for the lower frequencies is fierce and a full bodied piano would turn 
to mud in the mix.  
      While it takes craftsmanship to create hammers that will change 
spectral balance with volume, it is an art to match this curve to the customer.  In 
one sense, voicing on the concert stage is easier because we have to find a 
compromise level that will accomodate a wider range of artists.  In the school 
environment, it is often the head of the piano dept.  that gets to have the most 
input, and the rest of the faculty goes along.  Politics can enter into it, 
too. <sigh> 
     In homes, and single use pianos we often find the most demanding 
requirements.  Big strong pianists will often favor a softer hammer that allows them 
to "power up" for brilliance, while the less vigorous may want brilliance to 
be more accessible.  The former will often allow us to provide a wider range of 
tone, while the latter can be very challenging by requiring us to provide a 
mellow pp and a brilliant FF over a narrower range of volume.  In either case, 
the tone must be malleable, changing predictably from mellow to brilliant. 
However, mellow doesn't mean dead,  there has to be some high frequencies 
accompanying the lower partials at pp playing to give some definition to the sound.  
There also has to be some resilience in the hammer to provide power to the FF 
playing, too.  
    On stage, it is difficult to have this wide range.  I have seen some good 
concert pianos that were favored which had a very fast increase in 
brilliance.  By this I mean, playing softly produced a fairly subdued sound yet as the 
force increased, the brilliance arrived very quickly.  For a concert artist 
with a lot of control, this allows a variety of tone while also making it easy to 
get brilliance.  The better the control, the more rapid the change in tone 
they like.  Too hard a hammer and they complain about being unable to control 
it.  Too soft and they complain that it takes too much work to make the piano 
"speak".  A totally rock hard hammer is simply loud, not powerful. Power comes 
from the lower frequencies, loudness comes from our perception, which is 
enhanced by the addition of the higher partials,(which we are most senstive to). 
This is most easily noticed out in the hall, where I have heard numerous pianos 
sound harsh and thin, even though on stage, they seemed to be extremely 
powerful.  
    Regulation goes a long way in this equation, ie,  Mischa Dichter (sp?) 
once played a piano I had installed a set of Renner Blues in.   When I asked him 
about what he would like to change before the concert, he said, "There is a 
little voicing that could be done around C5, but with an action like that, it 
isn't a problem, so don't worry with it". He told me that he thought it had 
been specially set up by Ron Conners and shipped here from Atlanta and was amazed 
that the hammers were not factory.  
    I was able to  play Horowitz's piano at the Steinway factory before it 
was "restored".  The action was featherweight, dampers late, let-off at the 
absolute limit, and the hammers were like rocks with a thin layer of moss on them. 
 Play it very softly and it sounded fine, but as soon as you added virtually 
any strength, the piano became raucously brilliant.  Horowitz could, I 
suppose, control this piano, but his late recording still sound harsh, to my ear. 
That piano certainly shared nothing, tonally, with what I see coming from the 
factory.  I now have questions about only getting the "Steinway Sound" from 
factory hammers.  
     In fact, Steinway has changed so many things over the years that it is 
difficult to define exactly what constitutes a "real" Steinway.    There is a 
lot of plastic in the pianos that used to be felt.  There is different 
geometry. The hammers are different.  Were the Pratt-Read keys really "Steinway" keys? 
The strings are certainly not the same quality as they once were.  There is a 
long list of things that are continually changing, so changing something in 
the rebuild isn't quite like changing the composition of a prescription drug.  
And what are we to tell customers now that we are expected to call Boston and 
Essex pianos "Steinway products"?  
    
     As far as the signature "Steinway Sound" goes, that is a very vague 
target.  When our faculty went to Steinway to select a D,  they came back with the 
"one in the middle".  Out of five pianos, two of them were so soft that they 
sounded like mud, and two of them were so brilliant that they couldn't stand 
them.  Their impression was that there was a radical difference, not a subtle 
one, in the pianos.  Finding the common denominator in this sound is going to 
be difficult. 
    Pre-war, Steinway used to send pianos out that were not expected to sound 
their best until they were played in.  I have been told this by several 
old-time dealers.  Playing a softer hammer until it began to speak was the route to 
the full spectrum sound that the piano was capable of. I have cut into many 
of these older hammers and I don't find evidence of any lacquer. 
     Nowdays, they attempt to make them beautiful right out of the box, and 
they often do.  The problem is, the perfect sounding piano only lasts for the 
first year to so, then the fight is on to control the harshness.  It can be 
controlled, but the range of tone begins to shrink.  If we had unlimited budgets 
and could change hammers every two years, I think I would prefer the factory 
hammers.  Otherwise, I find the firmer felt to allow me and my needles to give 
better value over a longer period of time. 
Regards,   
 

Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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