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Hi,
I have a Yamaha Baby Grand GB1 for about 2 years. In the last few month I have been observing that the sound produced by B/27 and A#/26 notes is a bit "dirty". I thought it is a matter of tuning and called the Yamaha representative tuner to tune the piano and so he did. But the annoying sound was still there however he said that he could not hear what I'm hearing and these notes sound ok with him. I decided to look for a second opinion and a few weeks later called another tuner. This time, one that was not related to Yamaha. This guy tuned again the piano and the bad sound was still there. He said he could not hear any disordered sound and that the piano is just fine. He also said that if I hear any disordered sound form these notes then I probably have a very sensitive hearing. For a few day I tried to convince myself that maybe it is my imagination but it just kept on bugging me. So I went to a piano dealer (not Yamaha) in my area to consult with him. The first question he asked me was how far are these strings from the middle bar of the iron plate. (does it have a name?) My answer was that A#/26 is the closest one to the bar. He said he encountered a problem like this in the past and it is due to some bad resonance between the strings and the bar. He solved that by gluing a piece piano felt along the bar which eliminated the echo. So before I start making experiments on my piano I'd appreciate some more suggestions.

Thanks

Hi Shaking',
First, do you have a hearing aid? Turn it down if you do.

Second, have someone play the note and you walk around the piano and try to see if it's coming from the piano or something else in the room.

Third, the idea from the "other" piano dealer might have a good idea and something to try.

I'll bet you get lots of other good ideas here on the forum...

This is not an unusual problem with this size and make of piano. The area where the problem notes are located are known as "the Break" to piano technicians. It is notorious for poor tone in many small pianos, including Yamaha. There are two issues at play here:

1. The string tension can go dramatically down in this area. This in and of itself can cause tonal problems. Del Fandrich and I recently worked on a similar Yamaha grand and found the string tension dropped from around 150 pounds to under 90 pounds at the last note of the tenor section.

2. This area is also the end of the tenor/treble bridge. The decrease in mass and stiffness in this area also contributes to poor tone.

In regards to the piano mentioned above, the client had a similar situation to you. She bought the piano (about 4 years ago), trusting the Yamaha name and reputation, but then was very frustrated with the tone of those last few notes, especially the last 2. She had 2 different technicians sent out by the dealer but they were not able to make it any better, although at least she got some acknowledgment from the tech that it sounded funny. He said it was just how the piano was built. This did not make her feel better.

She finally contacted me, and I recommended that we consult with Del Fandrich who lives only 1/2 hour south of me. (For those of you who don't know Del, he is a well-known piano designer/builder who used to be head of R&D for Baldwin back in the 80's. He's now helping Young Chang redesign their concert grands)

Although there was no way, short of redesigning and rebuilding the piano to dramatically improve the problem there were some practical solutions that made it a whole lot less bad. Del's solution was to restring the low tenor section, and switch the lowest 4 plain wire strings to copper wrapped strings. The copper slows the string down and requires higher tension to be at pitch. Then Del added a fairly hefty brass weight to the underside of the bridge.

While the result was not ideal, (we did not expect it to be!) it improved it to the point that the client was able to enjoy playing the piano again. Before the repair, she had basically stopped playing it was bothering her so much.

You need to find the kind of technician who is willing to do some modifications to the piano. I would suggest contacting your local chapter of the piano technicians guild and find the most experienced technician or rebuilder who can help you through this. The cost to our client was around $700. This is far less than a new piano!

Are the hammers well fitted to the strings....with NO open or partially open strings...
this could make a huge difference to the snarls etc....especially around the break...
If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's OK...any technician should...if he doesn't, he's just a tooner....
Get GOOD advice here.
Look at the simple stuff BEFORE even thinking of changing anything!
Piano technology 101.

And when all this inevitably fails it is necessary to move beyond Piano Technology 101.

As Ryan pointed out in his earlier post, the dealer selling this piano had already sent two technicians to this piano in various attempts to resolve the problem. These were not incompetent klutz’s, they were credible technicians with good tuning and basic voicing skills. They had already done the obvious things like hammer fitting, string leveling, etc. In other words, they well understood Piano Technology 101.

But they had not learned to diagnose basic piano voice problems by ear. The sound of a hammer hitting just two strings of a three-string unison is quite different from the sound of a hammer hitting all three strings of a badly scaled tri-chord unison at the end of a poorly supported tenor bridge. Lacking this aural skill they had already tried the conventional remedies like making sure the hammers were correctly spaced to the strings and the strings were properly leveled. When these measures predictably failed, they had attempted to solve the problem by the only technique they knew: hammer voicing.

Not only did conventional hammer voicing techniques fail to improve the quality of sound, the sound of the piano ended up worse than it had been before they started. Not surprising given that this was not a hammer voicing problem. Ryan mentioned that I did not expect the results of my scale changes to produce “ideal” results. In part this was because of the over-needled and over-voiced hammers. The results are usually much better when scaling problems of this type are correctly diagnosed before any radical hammer voicing is done.

Look again at the two numbered points Ryan made:


Given this scaling and the lack of support at the end of the tenor bridge there is simply no way conventional voicing techniques are going to improve the tone quality across the bass/tenor break.

Over the past twenty years or so I have given a variety of seminars on how to diagnose scaling and structural problems by ear. Others are beginning to present them as well. I continue to urge technicians to attend these seminars whenever and wherever they are presented. Even with all the scaling and fundamental soundboard and bridge design information available to the technician of today this is still a poorly recognized part of basic piano technology. It is important, I think, even for the technician who does not intend to rebuild or extensively modify existing piano to learn to identify these scaling and structural problems by their distinctive sounds. If nothing else it will prevent him/her from attempting to resolve them in ways that are actually detrimental reducing the effectiveness of well-considered scaling and structural improvements.

ddf

PS For more on this subject see my comments under "Why do some pianos have 3 bridges?"

Ryan, I think you'll find that the GB1 has copper wound strings in the low tenor. My understanding is that this change in scaling in the low tenor was what turned the GA1 into the GB1.

I believe you are correct. This is one of those times when the manufacture's claim of an improved scale design may actually have some merit. The tone on the GA1 was so atrocious at the break they had to do something!

It is interesting that Yamaha so far has not wanted to admit that the GA1 had a scale problem. This has prevented them from wanting to cover the repair under warranty. Of course, if there was nothing wrong with it I wonder why they changed it?

I was not necessarily saying that what worked for my client would work for shakingthreelegs. It would be necessary for a knowledgeable person to evaluate the piano and make recommendations.

The reason for my post was to let the OP know that he's not imagining things when he notices odd tone in this area of the piano, and that its not necessarily a surprise that the techs have not been able to help yet.

Warranties only cover parts and worksmanship, not design. Design flaws are generally only corrected if they are dangerous, in a recall. If you do not like the design, you should not buy the product.

As a rule, I do not comment on problems in sound when I cannot hear the piano in question. However, shakingthreelegs had only noticed about this problem recently, not when the piano was new. While the problem may still be with the design, that is certainly something that did not change in the piano.

Scooters,
1. I'm not using any hearing aid.
2. The techs carried out already all these preliminary check ups like going around the piano, seeking for small pieces of metal or wood around the soundboard checking if there is not any reflection coming from walls, windows etc..

rysowers,
Is it possible that the piano is tuned and yet have the tension of the strings near the break as low as 90 pounds? I could hear the distortion right after it was tuned up .
As for Del Fandrich solution, though it sounds amazing, it's way too risky for me, I'd prefer trading-in the piano for a better one. (and I'm seriously considering this - not Yamaha this time)

Thomson Lawrie,
That is correct my piano, GB1, has copper wound strings in the low tenor.

BDB,
It may sound strange but I have not noticed this problem as I was plying mostly modern stuff. Lately I got acquainted with Chopin in particular Wales op. 69 No.2 and this piece just exposed the problem big time and made me aware of it. I guess Chopin did not have a GB1 at that time otherwise he would probably write this piece in a different scale.

Thank you all for trying to help.
I had to cross check a few points mentioned in these replies so I went today to the Yamaha dealer to play on the GB1 in the show room, just wanted to know if this is my particular piano problem or a GB1 model issue. As expected the distortion was also demonstrated there.(the salesmen of course could not observe any problem). Then I tried to play the same piece on a larger Yamaha (C2) and it sounded just fine.
(I can trade in my GB1 piano for the C2 and add extra $10k, though it is not a small amount of money I can make the effort and raise it, but I am not sure I want to it as I'm now furious with Yamaha and just do not feel like they deserve to earn more money on my expense. I feel like I was betrayed by a good respectful company selling me a bad designed piano for a large amount of money)

Shakingthreelegs,

In your first post you said that you have had this piano for about 2 years and that you have been observing in the last few months the sound of these notes being a little dirty.

Do they sounded well when you bought the piano and now they sound dirty?

Shakingthreelegs,

When I referred to the strings on my client's Yamaha being under 90 pounds of tension: this was with the string at its proper pitch. To know what tension your strings are at you will have to measure the speaking length of the string and the length of the copper wrap, the diameter of the core wire and the overall diameter of the string with the wrap. I don't recall what the tension was after Del made the modification. Del?

Keep in mind there are not many 4'11" pianos that sound good at the break. This may not be the best excuse for Yamaha, but its a classic problem.

Gadzar,
I now understand that it was there all the time. It just took time till I've become aware of it and learned to observe it.

You gain more experience, and you learn what you like and dislike. In this case, you have learned why bigger pianos are better. However, they cost more. Price and size versus sound is a decision one has to weigh.

You went a couple of years without noticing it. Most people may never notice it. Your piano was made for them.

So this piano is not for you, all you have to do now is to buy a Steinway D or an Imperial bosie.