Phillip: The piano I was referring to was a fine sounding piano with no problems. It had been nicely rebuilt about 8 years earlier by Tim Coates and sold to his brother. At the time we did the Wapinization, nothing else was done by way of belly work. The piano was not restrung. The tension was taken down section at a time, strings moved out of the way and the bridge modified alla Wapin with no notching or other work done. I honestly don't remember about the hammer filing. When I left the house mid-afternoon of the second day Tim was still tuning (as you can imagine it takes a few times through to get it stable). I don't know if he did any hammer filing. Perhaps he can chime in on this. Though the piano was not tuning stable when I left, it sounded good. I came back a few weeks later to tune again as it was still settling down. The piano is in Plano, TX and Tim is from the Dakota Territory (is that a state yet?) so he didn't come back to retune. At that time it sounded very nice. dave *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 1/29/2002 at 3:11 AM Phillip L Ford wrote: >Dave, > >I was wondering if everything else was exactly the same. When trying to >determine >if changes actually are improvements part of the problem is isolating the >change >you're interested in from all the other changes. For instance, you >rebuild a piano >and install the new super duper platinum wire. The piano sounds better. >Is it because >of the wire or the 20 other things you changed at the same time? If you >don't >change anything but the wire, then if it sounds better how do you know it >wouldn't >have sounded just as good (or better) if you had used the gold wire >instead of the >platinum? The same applies to this (or other) wapinizations. Did you >take a >properly functioning bridge termination of a conventional type and replace >it >with a wapin, or did you replace a bridge with indented caps and indented >and/or >loose bridge pins? Did you surface the bridge at all? Is the bearing >exactly the >same as it was before? Are the strings the same >as the ones that were there before? Was the capo resurfaced (since I >assume the >piano was restrung)? Were the hammers surfaced, since the grooves might >not >line up exactly with the new string locations? Etc., etc. >Questions like these have so far kept me from becoming a wapin believer. >I've >seen and heard some wapin pianos that sounded good. However, in my opinion >they didn't sound any better than those pianos would have sounded if they >had >been properly rebuilt with conventional bridge terminations. Frankly I'm >sceptical >about the merits of this system. Until I can hear some examples in which >the >bridge terminations can be directly compared with other variables held >constant >I probably will remain so. > >Phil F > >Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 11:52:14 -0600 >From: "David M. Porritt" <dm.porritt@verizon.net> >Subject: Re: Wapin bridge > >Phillip: > >In this case the bridge was not recapped. Frankly - I'm restricted >by the license agreement - from saying much more about the procedure. > > >dave > >On 1/28/2002 at 5:17 PM Phillip L Ford wrote: > >>Dave, >>I'm not familiar with the mechanics of a Wapin installation. Is the >bridge >>recapped and/or bearing (re)set? >> >>Phil F _____________________________ David M. Porritt dporritt@mail.smu.edu Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 _____________________________
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