Hi All, Indeed pianos should all be perfect. We should strive to not reinvent the wheel and subvert the original designers intent--after all he may know something we don't. Or their taste in tone color may be different. To put it another way, I hate cherry pie. That doesn't mean that cherry pie in of itself is offensive--just that my particular taste is for lemon! There have been discussions of how the front duplex (and possibly the rear) increase the tone. My understanding is that these are never struck by a hammer. *grin*. They are also no where near the soundboard. The bridge/soundboard interfaces should really be thought of as "transducers". They accept vibrational input from the string and modify it. Just like the needle/diaphram/horn in an old wind up phonograph. Each and every time a transducer is introduced some energy is absorbed. In the case of a vibrating string in a vaccumm with "perfect" friction free termination vs one in a piano I suspect the "trade off" is sustain. The way in which front duplexes are activated is by energy *losses* across the pressure bar (capo). It *does* take "energy" for them to vibrate, so therefore I think of them not as tone producers (they can't add energy) but as a tone "filtering" device. They are absorbing energy at specific partials. This is rather like a passive band pass filter on a stereo--which can't "add" energy but only "absorb" it. Are they an attempt to cause the plate to radiate sound energy? After all they are very distant from the soundboard and usually above the pinblock, which is a pretty solid piece of material (or should be *grin*). So is the front duplex a "transducer" like the sound board? I have never seen a front duplex with an aggraffe, or if I did I didn't recognize it as a duplex. I have personally never had a client complain about rear duplex. Nor have I heard one myself that was offensive. Has anyone had to mute off a rear duplex because of "jangles"? Regards, Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.M.T., R.P.T. Tuner for the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts drose@dlcwest.com http://donrose.htmlplanet.com/ 3004 Grant Rd. REGINA, SK S4S 5G7 306-352-3620 or 1-888-29t-uner
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