[pianotech] --Centering the bridge--was S&S something

[Ron Nossaman]

On 5/30/2012 9:19 AM, jim at grandpianosolutions.com wrote:

> What venue(s) are the instruments designed for?

What venues are production pianos designed for? And prior to the 
adoption of redesign options more recently made available to us, what 
was done in conventional rebuilding to customize for specific venues 
other than hammer choice?


>What types of music, as
> my experience of "full expressive range" always means, when push comes
> to shove, bloody Lizst and Rachmaninoff (and then I have to leave the
> room). In many ways Mozart, Bach and lots of Jazz, music conceived for
> small venues, or popular music, very well suffocate under this targeted
> late romantic "full expressive range".

Same response. What music are production pianos and conventional 
rebuilds suitable for?

I find it frustrating that while we now have capabilities to make rather 
dramatic improvements in tonal spectrum, durability, tuning stability, 
and predictability in redesign and rebuild, it's no good because we 
can't control everything precisely to the molecular level and produce 
the one piano that is absolutely perfect for the playing of one single 
piece of music by one specific pianist, meeting every conceivable nuance 
that pianist can't really describe with any accuracy in the first place, 
but will know when he hears it. I never have seen how that is specified 
on the blueprint.

Recursive anality seems to be nearly a universal default condition in 
this profession, but I don't see that we have anywhere near that 
detailed a data set of cause and effect to claim a level of control and 
mastery that is implied or wished for in many of these discussions. Many 
times, to little avail, I've explained that my fundamental approach is 
to try to eliminate as many of the down sides of traditional piano 
design as possible to see what's left to build more specific tonal 
output on. So far, eliminating as many of the counterproductive features 
and techniques as possible for a more sane and functionally engineered 
physics based system has resulted in what I consider a very nice tonal 
result. No, I haven't arrived, and I haven't stopped exploring by a long 
shot, nor am I going to tell anyone they're doing it wrong because they 
aren't doing it my way. What I try to offer here is my practical 
experience and engineering rationale for the basic structural approach, 
because it's so very different from traditional methods yet produces 
what I consider quite nice tonal results.

Where every other piano built or conventionally rebuilt is what it is, 
anything done with redesign on any level is accountable for an infinite 
level of detail and expected perfection in all ways. It is, as I said, 
frustrating.
Ron N