[CAUT] Baldwin Accujust

[Jeff Tanner]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Baldwin Accujust


> Jeff Tanner wrote:
>> I've always assumed all that nasty metallic sounding noise that makes the 
>> Baldwin so difficult to tune and produce a musical tone was the result of 
>> the vertical hitch pin.
>> Jeff
>
> Assumption based on what?

Based my observations that a) I've never heard it in non-Accujust Baldwins 
(or other makes), and b) it is still there when you mute out the front 
termination. Although that does dampen a lot of sympathetic ringing, it 
doesn't mute the sound I'm describing. We had Baldwins with the thick front 
termination felt which did mute the front length between the bearing bar and 
the tuning pins, and also one with the thin aesthetic strip. I'm familiar 
with the difference in the sounds that produces as well.  With the thin 
strip, you can hear the pitch of the front length change when you move the 
tuning pin and you can actually tell when the string is equalized when that 
section and the speaking length section are both tuned.  That's not what I'm 
talking about.

>
> No, it's either the front termination, or the rock like hammers. The other 
> nasty sounds, like the distortion in the attack in octave 5-6 is the 
> soundboard.

The sounds I hear are a combination of a metallic hollow ringing sound, as 
if you knock on the plate, and what I assume are the cumulative vibrations 
of various back lengths, the lengths of which seem to have no rhyme or 
reason (or tuning).  Rock hard hammers exist in other pianos, but don't make 
this kind of racket.  When you make cotton balls out of the hammers, it's 
still there.  We had an early 80s SF with much better hammers that they'd 
only used sparingly as an overflow recital piano, but this sound I'm 
describing was still there.

I had to do my "audition" tuning on a then 3 year old L in a practice room. 
I didn't have a lot of experience tuning the artist series Baldwins before 
that (I can't recall more than half a dozen at most over the previous 14 
years). It was a pitch correction and I wound up tuning AT that thing 3 
times before I felt like it was reasonably stable. I was brain fried and 
physically exhausted after that tuning (my pre ETD years), and was never 
satisfied with any of the tunings I ever did on any of those newer Baldwins 
in 10 years.  Recently tuned a 1943 Baldwin concert grand that had a nice 
rebuild done and I really liked that piano a lot (even though there were a 
lot of false beats in the new strings). Our church has a 1977 SD-10 that 
can't touch it.  This week I tuned a 1955 M with all original everything and 
it was easier to tune, rock hard hammers, dead, poor rendering strings, 
loose tuning pins and all, than any of the Accujust Baldwins I've tuned.

So, call it circumstantial evidence, but it appears to this non-engineer to 
be related to the vertical hitch pins.
Jeff