YC Strike Weights etc

[John Delacour]

At 4:23 PM +0000 11/9/01, David Stanwood wrote:

>I've found that a 7.5 ratio makes for unbelievebly heavy dynamic 
>touch requiring enormous amounts of key lead to balance to a normal 
>Down Weight with very high friction weight and extremely shallow dip 
>with jacks that lock up in the repetition window when the key is 
>depressed down onto the front punching.  A sure recipe for 
>"heartache and Labour"...as far as the pianist is concerned.
>
>So I disagree with Pfeiffer on this point.

Ah yes,  I was forgetting you're all wedded to that damn Erard-Herz 
action :-)  Pfeiffer was more catholic, though he does seem to take 
the Langer 1919 action (not dissimilar to Ron O's version) as the 
best development of it, while not discounting quite different actions.

As to jacks that lock up...etc. whatever happened to the good old 
back-stop?  Too difficult to regulate?  More trouble than it's worth? 
And since with the key-pins in a straight line, the back levers of 
all the keys are identical, so the relationship of the key to the 
wippen is the same for all keys.

The key-dip (say 8 mm) for the sharps is precisely the same as for a 
natural hit at a similar distance from the line of fronts, as it very 
often is.  I've never heard a pianist complain he has trouble playing 
the naturals when the music is in E flat although he is hitting them 
well beyond the front line of the sharps and I've seen plenty of 
grand falls heavily gouged out by the fingernails of some of the best 
pianists including at least one world-class name.

I was called to a Steinway D in London this week.  The technician had 
asked me a few weeks ago to prepare a brand new keyboard for this 
piano and this I had done, including a very accurate and painstaking 
weighing off of the keys -- all this a long way from London.  He was 
to call me as soon as he'd done the final fitting to the key-bottom 
so that I could guide him through the regulatIon.  Time passed and he 
procrastinated and finally called me to say the owner, a well-known 
lady teacher, found the touch too "heavy".  Now I knew exactly how 
"heavy" it was and that her impression had nothing to do with the 
down weight, which I'd deliberately set higher than the standard 
50->46.  On first looking at the piano I guessed what the "heaviness" 
was due to but proceeded to do what I'd originally planned and plane 
the hammer taper as I would have done if it had been me that had 
fitted them.  The pianist was then invited to tell the difference. 
She could not, as I had predicted.  I then spent a bare quarter of an 
hour screwing up the drop screws so that the hammers fell over just 
one millimetre, without bothering to get the set-off right first -- 
my friend had not used a rail but done it in the piano, with the 
usual results.  She was then invited to try the piano again and 
declared that it was transformed.  My friend had come prepared with 
all the gear to fill the keys with even more of the beastly lead and 
we left the house without having added a gram.  He now has stricter 
instructions than before to make himself a rail and consult properly 
with me as he finishes the job properly.

All this to say that static down-weight and all that jazz can be a 
red herring.  This same client has a 1914 Steinway C in the same room 
which has had the genuine Steinway treatment, that is to say genuine 
$500 Steinway hammers and tons of genuine Steinway lead hammered in 
by a real Steinway technician.  The down-weight is fine...the 
up-weight is almost OK....the regulation is not too bad...and the 
thing is unplayable.  And the reason is lead.

JD