Hi Isaac. | Stephane, | | As you felt personally insulted, I will apologize to you publicly, so | here I do. | Thanks Isaac, I do appreciate. | I apologize to you Stephane, to have presumed that your instruments | are too heavy in touch, but with a 50 g BW, I harly could find an | instrument nice to play. Sorry Isaac, but I have to correct you : my instrument, even with 50 g BW has no problem at all with heavy touch (it is a pianist talking to you). It just has a specific dynamic linearity problem between P and mF registers. Apart from this which proves to be a handicap when playing quietly a 4 part fugue of Bach, the instrument is very agreable to play. So I have empiric evidence in my living room that the statement "50 g BW = not nice to play" is false. This leads me to think a more general thought : magic formula is one thing, real life is another (more than often much more complicated). | | I hear you proud of your touch and tone, and you send there figures | that show that you don't even try to match original's parts weight, or | to weight off the keys so to keep a more usual touch. Interesting. Do you know the original hammer weight curve of a Bechstein piano of 1890 ? I badly need this information, as all pre-1900 Bechstein pianos I had (about 14) didn't have original hammers (of course not) (but one, I must admit, but out of standard, as he has at least 5 underfelt layers) and the last set (by the way, did all the in between technicians copy exactly the former hammer weights ? of course not) was probably filed once, twice or more, who knows, with respect or not, who knows, to the original apparent bore distance. As me myself and I don't know about original hammer weight (uptil now, but sure I would like to know), I (uptil now) trusted Abel when they sell me a hammer set which they claim to be made to older Bechstein standards. But then I read in an interesting article of David C. Stanwood that even now, even in best brand piano factories, there is much inconsistency in hammer weight, and that this situation gains to be improved, in evening out more precisely the SW (thus the hammer weight). So this is the situation : should I copy the hazardously presumed original weight of pseudo original hammers, that happen anyway to show some inconsistency, before you call this true restoration ? Uptill now, I prefer trusting my ears and my fingers, and my musical taste. | | I don't call that restoration, that is all. If you want the good | hammers and shanks you should obtain copies of originals, not using | the catalog parts. About shanks, indeed, I prefer keeping the originals. This I experimented : original shanks sound different than new ones. I agree, I couldn't say sound better or worse, but I can say sound different. I see no reason for changing original shanks. Do you ? But I am very interested in being told who can make good copies of original parts, as new catalog parts NEVER fit accurately the older Schwander actions. | | I sometime get hot because some don't seem to undertand the same | concepts and ideas that are lenghtly explained on this list, while | acting as experts in the field I'll never pretend (before long) that I am an expert. Neither do I act as if in field. Neither will I be happy if someone calls me totally shot. We of course neet to be satisfied by | our results, bu that is not the same thing to put new parts on an | instrument and have it musical and playeable. | | Day in day out, I spend numerous hours that I can't be paid enough for | it to have old pianos or even more recent ones corrected to the point | the action became controllable, the tone pleasing, and the piano | tunable by a normal standard. How will I explain to my presumably | happy pianist that just baught this restored instrument, that the | hammmers have to belightened, the key weighted, etc ? This I understand very well. But be honnest : I heard pianos restored by uppermost regarded restoring shops (even in Paris, names on request), that truly, Isaac, I would be ashamed to present to a pianist, if not to a technician. General statement : an instrument bears with it the spirit in which it has been done. | | Tht is why I tend not to make gifts, that should be lost anyway , | actually. "don't throw pearls to pigs". I can agree with this, foreseen that you can recognize a pig. | | Time is precious as we get old. Sorry for your sensibility. | | Regards. | | Isaac OLEG | Regards, Stéphane Collin.
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