List, I enjoyed the discussion about the Crescendo punchings, but since I didn't get much feedback about my questions of touchweight targets, I decided to weigh off a Yamaha piano of similar dimensions to the mid-60's 41 inch Heintzman I am working on, and see what I could learn. The Yamaha is an LU-101 I purchased in 1984, and I've always enjoyed the feel of it. I noted that none of the sharps had lead weights, though the naturals did. This piano ran near the bottom of the product line when it was made, so I'll assume that the weighting was more or less standardized rather than customized for the individual instrument. I'm attaching a chart of my results. Here are my generalizations on what I found. >From A0 to D2 downweight averaged 55g, upweight averaged 35.6 grams, balance weight averaged 41.5 grams and friction averaged 9.7 grams. >From D#2 to F#3, downweight sat right around 50 grams, and upweight averaged 36.6 grams. Friction ran for the most part between 6 and 8.5 grams. >From G3 to E6, downweight for the naturals hovered between 44 and 47 grams, while the sharps came in between 47 and 50. (I assume the difference was incidental to the manufacturing process, not deliberate.) >From F6 to C8, downweight fell pretty consistently at 49 to 51 grams. Single digit friction was the order of the day, with the exception of 7 notes in the low bass. Only rarely did friction come in as low as 5 grams -- 6 to 9 was typical. As I prepare to rebalance the Heintzman keyboard, here are my proposed targets for downweight: A0 to D2 - 55 grams D#2 to F#3 - 50 grams G3 to E6 - 48 grams F6 to C8 - 50 grams I will monitor friction as I go, but given all the work I've done on flanges, key bushings, and overall lubrication, I expect to see fairly consistent measurements. I'll let upweight fall where it will, but will record the results. I'm really curious to find out how the Heintzman will feel when I'm done. Any comments? Floyd Gadd Manitoba chapter -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Touchweight LU-101.xls Type: application/octet-stream Size: 18944 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090714/f7fbf9c4/attachment-0001.obj>
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