Wretched S&S & Yamahas

[Ron Overs]

Newton, Terry and list,

Newton wrote;

(Regarding Yamaha pianos)

>I prefer the richer, warmer,
>more mellow sound more common to American and European pianos.
>
>All you need to do is change the hammers to Abels, Isaacs or
>Ronsons.
>What you get will astound you.

Terry replied;

>I have heard that said. . .  I have also
>heard that because of the thicker Yamaha soundboard (because, at least in
>part, of its softer rim) the piano really needs the harder hammer to do
>whatever its supposed to do. Does the piano still have good power with the
>replacement hammers (what about Renner)?

I have no doubt that a more resilient hammer set will improve the 
tonal situation. But the sound board design also is at the root of 
the Yamaha tone problem - perhaps more so than the rim. The less than 
dense rim will influence the sustaining qualities through hysteresis 
losses, but the panel itself (and its ability to move, in particular) 
in conjunction with the choice of hammer will determine the tonal 
characteristics.

The Yamaha typical thin tone with a lack of fundamental has as much 
to do with the high sound board impedance, in the bass and tenor 
sections in particular. A typical Yamaha sound board panel is 9 mm 
thick, right to the perimeter, everywhere.

As with Kawai pianos, it appears that the sound board panel comes out 
of the planer, and to a set thickness, only to be inserted into an 
'instrument' without any further profiling.

We are presently converting a G2 Yamaha to a floating board design 
around note A1, and tapering the perimeter adjacent to the bass 
bridge and at note B27 on the long bridge. A bridge extension was 
installed at note A#26 (to make the upper end of the bridge cross two 
ribs), to raise the sound board impedance at the upper bass bridge 
area (this area typically has an impedance value which is too low in 
many pianos - resulting in a poor crossover). Furthermore, we have 
inserted a sound board cutoff bar across the bass corner and the ribs 
will be pared back to terminate at the cut off bar (the cutoff bar in 
this modification is fixed onto the upper surface of the sound board, 
since we are using the original board - this also allows us to bolt 
the sound board assembly and cutoff to the lower bass strut where it 
crosses the new cutoff bar - for added rigidity at the cutoff). So 
far, this board sounds promising. It no longer sounds 'Japanese' when 
subjected to the 'rap' test. I await the strings to confirm that we 
have eliminated the 'skinny' tone.

Would anyone like to see an image of the G2 sound board modification 
when its completed? (I will take an overhead of the board). Let me 
know if you are interested using the email link below (the '?subject' 
suffix of the link will automatically fill out the subject field of 
the email).

mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au?subject=Please_Send_G2_Overhead_Image

Regards to all,

Ron O

-- 
Overs Pianos
Sydney Australia
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Web site: http://www.overspianos.com.au
Email:     mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au
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