Cy, I've asked Vince Mrykalo to respond because he has definite opinions on it. I hope he will. But here is what Vince taught me, and what I do; I strive for both! A balance weight of 35-38 and DW from 50-52. (and UW for reasonable F) Some may argue the numbers with me, and I must say that I "try" to get these kind of numbers, but sometimes I'll go with a higher BW (39-41) if the owner seems to like that feel. When they play several and keep coming back to something they like, I try to take note of that. Here at BYU we have many pianos to play and try/experiment with. Whatever I do I want it to be consistent throughout the piano. This seems to be more important than some of the numbers we become so anal about. Our Hamburg D is very consistently 38 BW, 52 DW. One pianist that all our piano faculty nearly bowed to in honor every time they mentioned his name said "I have played in every major concert hall in the world and this is the most even touch and voicing of any piano I've ever played." (Vince did the work, not me.) So this is why I chose those numbers as my default. Another great pianist once told me that he wished technicians would stop trying to make all pianos play and sound the same!! (I had asked what advice he could give me...) He said "Let the piano be what it wants to be; this one brighter, that one darker, one heavier and another lighter touch." This really opened things up for me. We walked around and he played several pianos (all Steinways at Snow College) and he said "This one would be great for (such and such) piece. And that one for (such and such) concerto. And this one has a very heavy touch compared to that one, but I like them both!" In fact I've had three giants of the piano at different times tell me the same basic things. All were amazing and had won about every major competition you've ever heard of. When I do have their ear (and it's easy when they're in rural Utah with time to waste) I always ask the question "what advice can you give me as a technician". I know Fred Sturm would agree that he likes a variety in his pianos, but your question as to "which" is more desirable BW or DW, I'm not sure can be answered easily. My 4 bits. Regards, Jim Busby From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Cy Shuster Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 8:54 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Even balance weight or even downweight I didn't see any replies on this. It's a great question -- any takers? --Cy-- Cy Shuster, RPT Albuquerque, NM www.shusterpiano.com<http://www.shusterpiano.com> On Sep 24, 2009, at 5:58 PM, David Love wrote: While working with one of my colleagues to help him through the ins and outs of the Stanwood basics we got into a brief discussion about what is desirable from the pianist's point of view: uniform balance weight or uniform downweight. It's easy enough to set up the balance weight system so that it gradually increases in proportion to the ever decreasing friction in order to achieve a uniform downweight. The charts below illustrates that. I'm curious for those of you who use the balance weight system whether you ever target a uniform downweight instead and what the overall reaction is. I typically do not, though I'm considering trying it on the next action. I do sometimes get comments that the upper end of the piano is too light and it seems like a reasonable approach. One side benefit of doing it this way is a higher up weight in the upper end of the piano which, presumably, would reap benefits in terms of repetition. The key didn't copy for some reason so it is as follows: (if the charts don't appear open the email in html rather than plain text). Blue circles are down weight Red diamonds are balance weight Blue Triangles are up weight Red circles are friction Note 1 is on the far left, 88 on the far right <image001.png> <image002.png> David Love www.davidlovepianos.com<http://www.davidlovepianos.com> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090928/7a48e59b/attachment-0001.htm>
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