Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum lead weights, here to stay?

It was meant as a joke. It's definitely still radioactive...

Perhaps a slight twist to this interesting topic.

"Our pianos do not use lead as weights".

How does that statement affect the marketing area?

Does anyone know that the automotive industry uses for wheel-balancing weights? My understanding is that (at least here in S. Africa) lead was phased out of this application a while ago. Whatever they use nowadays, instead of lead, could well be applied in pianos...

Plutonium would also be a nice one - who needs a piano lamp when your instrument glows in the dark.

In my area, ancient lead pipes are used underground to bring drinking water into houses. As far as I know, I haven't yet been poisoned.

Butt dare izz steel dime, azz deyy sey...(Hal, I'm fading....)

Depleted uranium is far cheaper and almost exactly the same density, but it will never catch on. Piano makers wouldn't use it because they would be forced to change manufacturing techniques. They are so steeped in tradition that if you can't swedge the material to keep it in the key they wouldn't be able to figure out how to use it. Uranium is to darn un-malleable.

But think of the marketing possibilities. "Not only have we eliminated lead from our pianos, but now, never play a cold set of keys again. So long as you don't eat the keys or play more time than the included dosimeter allows daily, you'll be fine. It's just alpha particles, after all."

How about Americium 141? Wait, that's already in our smoke detectors... Isn't it funny that we all have a (extremely) little piece of radioactive man-made element in our houses...? Why not more in our pianos?

Seriously, they could just use iron or steel weights if it bothers people too much. I'd be more worried about lead in the glazing on some china than in a piano. Magnetic accelerated actions look really promising as well.

If lead is not used, is it possible to use say iron or alloy and put in an extra piece to compensate for the weight difference?

"ancient lead pipes are used underground to bring drinking water into houses"

Now THAT would ring me alarm bells. Let's remove those first before discussing a few grams in the piano that are NOT intended for eating

"If lead is not used, is it possible to use say iron or alloy and put in an extra piece to compensate for the weight difference?"

Yes. I think one other advantage of lead though is that it is so soft that you can just press it in and it will deform to stay put. With harder metals you would have additional mounting problems

I believe that the pipes have long since been coated on their insides with mineral deposits from the hard water, so anybody afflicted with Pb poisoning from when the pipes were new are long dead. Heck, even my kettle gets coated within a few days' use....

Anyway, I'm not worrying, just as I don't worry about Hg poisoning from eating fish (I just avoid those high up in the food chain like tuna, sharks, marlin, crocs & alligators.... and stick to piranhas).

Direct exposure to lead-based products has been a concern for at least forty years. I remember leaded gasoline, lead-based house paints, and lead/tin plumbing solder. Products such as these clearly provided direct exposure to and/or ingestion of lead. Such products were banned over time and economically viable alternatives were found.

The current concern with lead in products has little to do with exposure during normal operation of a product but rather what happens after the product is disposed of - specifically lead leaching from landfills into the water supply. The electronics industry has been eliminating lead from assembly processes for the past decade or two, not because of concern that someone will swallow a Pentium processor but that lead will be released into the environment when the motherboard is trashed or recycled.

I'm not sure how much lead there is in a piano, but my guess is that it is substantial - far more than would be found in a pre-ROHS PC...

P flat poisoning? What inversion gives P flat? Or is P flat one of those really low notes on the Stuart and Sons 102 note piano?


Dan

"...Anyway, I'm not worrying [about lead water pipes], just as I don't worry about Hg poisoning from eating fish..."

Blame the Gold Rush. A mercury process was used to extract gold from its ores, and a very great deal of it was mined in what is now a very lovely ridgetop park (Almaden Quicksilver) right within the city limits. So now, 150 years later, we have a big problem with mercury leachate into the reservoirs and ground water. Fishing is allowed in the reservoirs, but eating the fish is poisonous. Brain damage, reproductive damage (quite a bit in common with lead poisoning, in fact).

We all remember the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll's fantasy books, but he didn't make that part up: hatmakers in Victorian England often came down with crazy-making brain diseases because they handled felt in their work... felt made with a process that used a solution of nitrate of mercury.

Felt? Mercury? What does that have to do with pianos? Hmmm... I don't know. Pianos... felts. I've read something about modern fulling processes, and they don't seem to mention mercury. (Wiki says it was banned in the US in 1941. But how much piano felt is made in the US, I wonder? None, that I've ever heard; it's all offshore now, partly because without environmental restrictions products are cheaper to manufacture.)

Call me overly-cautious, but I buy steam-distilled water for drinking. Ignorance may still be bliss, but I've found things out the hard way too many times already.

(''P flat poisoning?'')
Sorry, it's my school science teacher's fault. He insisted we always use the chemical symbols for elements. Pb=lead, Hg=mercury, Au=gold. And H (as in B.A.C.H.) = B natural (as in Stuart & Sons pianos).

bennevis,

I have a BS in chemistry. It was just too good of a set up to not make a joke. The joke was as much of a dorky chemistry joke as it was a dorky music joke.

Dan

Ah yes, the worldwide anti-Pb hysteria. Similar to the worldwide anti-Hg hysteria, but with even less basis. Should care be used? Of course. Over-react and ban perfectly useful metals from appropriate applications? Ludicrous.

Proudly made in USA, and used in Ronsen hammers: http://www.baconfelt.com/

Germany makes a lot of felt, too, and they have pretty strict regulations, I believe.