[pianotech] Chickering's splayed actions...Why?

[Ron Nossaman]

jim ialeggio wrote:
> 
>     I like Marcel's take on the straight keys. 
> 
> The quarter grand's keys are aggressively angled with only a single 
> bend, so the back of the key doesn't end up parallel to the front of the 
> keys...thus ruining yet another perfectly good theory....I personally 
> have quite a fine collection of slightly used, perfectly good 
> theories...any takers? 
> 
> Which models have straight keys?

I don't know that any do. I tend not to retain details like 
that, and was willing to take Marcel's word for it.


>     Where did the money come from?
>     Ron N
> 
> 
>  I'll say! I can't for the life of me figure how a production line could 
> run with these designs.

You got me. How many new plate patterns were made through 
their history? How many rim presses? How many scales? How many 
pinblock configurations? Flange types? Key sets and action 
layouts?

One thing that comes to mind is that the old man wasn't 
content to sit at a desk and run the most efficient possible 
business. He needed to be doing something he considered 
interesting and educational, whatever the cost to the 
business. So he did. I can see the despair on the various shop 
foremen's faces when they saw the boss coming, head down and 
muttering to himself, looking at this week's set of drawings.

Which produced another thought. He didn't mess with bridge 
design, as far as notching, pinning, and capping - at least 
that I recall. Those guys all had sharp chisels in hand.


>  From a design perspective, maybe his assumptions of what constituted a 
> well regulated action was quite different from our assumptions. I don't 
> mean that pejoratively either. I've always preferred the performance of 
> these actions to those built,say, according to steinway assumptions.
> 
> JIm I

Except that of the two approaches, one is intentionally 
random. <G> What becomes the default standard of anything 
isn't necessarily based on specific and absolute performance 
criteria. I'm still regularly amazed at the spectrum breadth 
of what passes as acceptable and even desirable, in anything 
people do. Every army marches to it's own "standard", and 
they're all different.

Ron N