"loud" pedal

[Stephen Airy]

A lot of my friends call the right (sustain) pedal the
"loud" pedal.  I sometimes correct them and say it's
the "damper" or "sustaining" pedal.

As for a soft pedal, in my experience I think a hammer
rail pedal works better than an una corda pedal.  My
mom's 1999 PG-150 baby grand has an una corda which is
almost unnoticeable, and my 1913 Ricca & Son has a
hammer rail pedal which works wonderfully, even though
the rest of the piano needs restoration (although from
what I can tell the soundboard & ribs look & sound
pretty good).


--- Dave Nereson <dnereson@dimensional.com> wrote:
> 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: David Ilvedson 
>   To: pianotech 
>   Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 10:34 PM
>   Subject: Re: Keybed Inserts
> 
> 
>   Are you calling the left pedal the loud pedal?  I
> call it the shift pedal
>   or soft pedal.
> 
>   David I.
> 
>   > If the loud pedal is used with any regularity,
> the glide bolts 
>   >will easily burnish a trough in side grain and
> will need to be 
>   >readjusted regularly. 
> 
>   >Bill Ballard RPT
>   >NH Chapter, P.T.G.
>   >
>   >"May you work on interesting pianos."
>   >     ...........Ancient Chinese Proverb
>   >+++++++++++++++++++++
> 
>   There IS no "loud pedal" on a piano.  The right
> pedal operates the dampers and is the damper pedal,
> or sustain pedal, which if held down, can create the
> illusion that the piano is louder, but it's really
> not --  there are just more strings ringing
> simultaneously.  The middle pedal on better grands
> and very few uprights is the sostenuto pedal (not
> 'sustenuto', even though 'sustain' in English is
> spelled with a 'u'), and on most other pianos it's a
> bass sustain, practice mute (strip of felt),
> rinky-tink attachment, or tied to the left pedal. 
> The left pedal is the "soft pedal" on verticals and
> a few grands, where it makes the piano "softer" by
> reducing the blow distance to about half -- this of
> course introduces much lost motion except in those
> actions that have "lost motion compensators".  And
> in those grands where the left pedal shifts the
> action laterally, causing the hammers to miss a
> string, it's still called the soft pedal by most
> people, and the 'una corda' pedal by oth!
> ers.  'Una corda' (one string) comes from a time
> when most pianos had two-string unisons -- when you
> depressed the pedal, the action would shift and hit
> only one string of each unison.  Nowadays, 'due
> corde' (two strings) would be more correct since
> when the pedal is engaged, the hammers still hit two
> strings of each unison.  All of which is beside the
> point, except that to my ears, "loud pedal" instead
> of "damper pedal" is akin to "pads" or "felts"
> instead of "hammers".    As for the inserts for the
> glide bolts, I would think any hardwood would be
> fine, with the end-grain facing up, but oriented in
> the same direction as the keybed grain.  It would
> take a heavy action, rough bolt surfaces, or greatly
> rounded bolts and an awful lot of action shifting
> (soft pedaling -- not 'peddling', which is selling
> stuff) to wear grooves in the inserts.    --Dave
> Nereson, RPT
> 
> 
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