Kent, It must be an awful feeling to face hearing loss. I hope that I will recognize it, if or when it starts and will not be in too much denial about it and know when to quit. Here are a few of the things that I believe were done to the pianos at IWU due to hearing loss. The hammers were solid lacquer. I suppose some people might actually prefer the sound, but I thought it had been done in an effort to brighten the sound, perhaps to make them more audible(?). Personally, as a pianist, I am not fond of rinky-tink and also believe that it should not take a lot of effort to play at a soft level. The thing I hated dealing with the most was, since my predecessor could not hear the clicks to fix them (and would not admit that he could not hear them) he over- tightened all the screws. My favorite (I *am* being sarcastic) instance of this I discovered when attempting to do some rather standard damper trimming. As I tried to loosen the set screws that secure the damper wires, the screw heads broke off. (Please observe a moment of silence here.) As a result of faculty complaining about clicks (Teflon Steinways), the actions had been pinned REALLY tight. I guess the reasoning was that if it was tight it would not click. You can imagine what a delight these instruments were to play! Since my predecessor used a Sight-O-Tuner, and I believe relied strictly on it, tuning at the top was not much of an issue. However, a curious thing did happen. I was told that there was a note on the older Steinway D on stage, that would not stay in tune. I checked it out. The shared wire had been replaced and I could not even get the thing to tune up, much less stay in tune. The tuning pin was tight enough and it wasnt an obvious case of stiction. I then looked at the wires--gee, they were two different sizes! The newer string was size 12-- in the size 15 section. Well, one does not have to be deaf to pick up the wrong size wire, but it proved to me that the Sight-o-Tuner was doing all the listening! Barbara Richmond Illinois Wesleyan University Bloomington, Illinois berich@heartland.bradley.edu
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