I've been wondering about the concept of the splayed grand action for a while. Why would a manufacturer do this to themselves? I don't mean this as a pejorative question. Rather, I have to assume manufacturers were chasing after some design goal with this splay, since angled shanks impose 88 different geometries, further (and somewhat excessively) complicating an action's already complicated collection of geometries. Chickering did this for what(?)...75 years. It wasn't a one off trick. And further, they had to pull it off in a production setting. So what might they have been up to? I can come up with a couple of guesses, but I wonder if any of you manufacturer design guys have any insight on this question. possibilities?: 1- the angled shank imposes a rotation on the hammer. Is there a tonal effect they were looking for, as the most aggressive angles were in the low tenor and bass? Reduction of bass power so as not to overpower the treble? 2- Is it the vestigial remains of a previous way of thinking about action design? 3- To my eye, the proportions of Chickering cases are often significantly more graceful than the cases of other modern pianos. Could the splay have allowed a visual reduction in the required acreage needed to house an action? The recent short thread on Brown actions brought this to mind. Jim I -- grandpianosolutions.com (under construction) Shirley, MA (978) 425-9026 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090808/51b41bbe/attachment-0001.htm>
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