[pianotech] Tone building in the modern piano

[Tony Caught]

Mike,

Currently in Australia the list of work required on a piano is 

Upon installation Tune the piano, settle the strings, retune to A440, check
regulation to factory settings, check all screws, adjust pedals, polish
cabinet etc. The dealer is supposed to pay for this and in return the
importer will pay a sum of money to retune the piano at their expense.

A lot of dealers ignore this and just tune the piano on delivery. OK. The
piano was sold at a discount price so why do the work.

So I agree with you, there is a lot of work still to do on the piano even
after the above work is carried out. Refacing the hammers and removing the
bum fluff, voicing the hammers to get more bounce, yes, checking and
rectifying the strike point of the hammer. Sure I can get the piano to sing
but at whose cost. Then the next problem, the piano sings but its not the
rich colour of tone that I want so maybe if I glued a 4*2 hunk of maple on
the soundboard at the treble end or put in thinner strings to cut the
tension so the existing soundboard could handle the vibrations or what ?

Oh yeah weak not leak but then again ?

Tony

Tony Caught
acaught at internode.on.net


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Mike Spalding
Sent: Thursday, 20 May 2010 9:46 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Tone building in the modern piano



Tony Caught wrote:
> (snip)
> You as a tuner would have to be as unsatisfied as I am with the modern
piano
> and the manufactured faults that makes it mediocre in tone, so leak
(weak?)in some
> places and strong in others.
>
> How can we make them better.
>
> Not the Steinways or the Bose's but the Samicks and Pearl River stuff.
>
> Tony
>
>
> Tony Caught
> acaught at internode.on.net
Tony,

One way to make them better is to do the finishing work that seems more 
and more to be omitted by the factories and the dealers.  Case in 
point:  A newish Bergmann (Young Chang), the owner complained of a very 
woody, weak and uneven tone in the top end.  An hour and a half later it 
was singing:  Key easing and other friction elimination, filing some 
felt off of the excessively fat and heavy hammers, and re-hanging a 
handful of hammers that were striking too close to the v-bar (and were 
visually obviously out of line with their neighbors).  A sad fact of the 
modern piano is that the supply chain can't afford to do this kind of 
work and stay in business.  They are what they are when they come off 
the assembly line.  Some of this tone building stuff is the obvious 
basics, it's not rocket science, but it's necessary to get each step 
right before going on to the next.

Mike