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Is not your car in need of some new components from time to time ?

Prior to regulation, the technician check the centers condition. on a 40 years old piano there is alot to do before regulation, but the tooners prefer to be paid to regulate (which make the piano works a little better)

To have the feel of a new or recent action is possible once the wear is adressed. if not the regulation is not holding nicely

example on a 1908 Steinway (which is due for a large job later)
https://picasaweb.google.com/105302...nwayA1908?authuser=0&feat=directlink

On a more recent 1930 mod B , I changed 66 hammer centers prior to any work (and those parts where may be 35 years old


If you cound on parts that last all the life of the piano I suggest it is not prone to arrive, on the contrary, most of the things we buy today have a reduced life span, sometime volontarly. Some can be repaired, most have to be thrown out and new ones baught.

If you think about the technical history of the piano, much of the development over time was to make the instrument 1. More powerful and 2. Reliable at that level of power. Thus the evolution of brass wire to steel wire and the older wooden structure to a cast iron plate.

I'm not quite sure how one makes an action too powerful or even what that means. In my view an action would be too powerful when it breaks strings.

We have extensively tested our actions in real pianos. That is actuating real strings at full volume, using PianoDisc technology to assure consistency in the testing. In our testing we have not encountered string breakage except in one instance where let-off was inadvertently adjusted above the string.

We did find it interesting that instead of breaking action parts we broke strings. However, almost no one would actually play a piano so poorly regulated.

Pianist have really loved the consistency from note to note that composite shanks give compared to the inconsistency of wooden shanks.

If the test for acceptability is they must be exactly like wooden parts than no they are not. However, if the test is, do composite parts make a better piano than the answer is yes, they do.

We view composite parts as just continuing the development of the instrument in a manner typical of the late 19th century after meaningful improvement stagnated for nearly all of the 20th century.

Regarding a Steinway action getting very loose after 6 years of hard use; for the last thirty years most new Steinways, (and some other makes as well) have come from the factory with spongy, loose action centers and over eased key-bushings. Makers fear of a stuck key drives a lot of that. Almost every set of new replacement parts from Steinway, (and other makers) that I use when rebuilding has to be sized and re-pinned to meet the performance and durability that I want to provide to my clients.

Compounding the pinning issues is the hammer mass. Most newer hammers are heavier than the type used from 1850 to around 1940. If the tone-regulation does not use hammer mass reduction techniques a piano action is far less tolerant of tight pinning. With low overall inertia in an action, higher friction is not detrimental- in fact it helps the dynamics and evens the tone and improves soft playing.

Most new Steinways (and others makes) I see need re-pining, re-bushed keys, hammer shaping to reduce weight without reducing the felt where it strikes string-and reduction in the number of front placed key-leads, and adding a back lead to the higher treble keys. Then they become far more durable regarding tone and feel-and are much easier to service.

With the WNG shank/flange on the market now-I do not use a wood shank on any Steinway I am rebuilding now. They are superior and I am not compensated in any way to make this remark.

Well if the ^pinning problem is solved it is wonderful.

remain the tone question.

I agree that all the NY Steinway I have seen have much more lead than the German ones, (I have seen 4-5 leads in the mediums, 7 in the basses)I dont understand why , unless it is to produce more tone. May be you are not very well deserved with the pianos you find on your market.


Pinning on usual actions is sensitive to climate indeed, but the instruments we have are generally in good condition on that aspect (a testing is necessary, pinning problems may arise a few years later, -10-15 years for instance, and many actions have no problem with pinning)

Of course the hammer have a weight in relation with the power expected, the scaling, the soundboard.

I like light hammers and fast action but there is less nuances possibilities, particularly on old soundboards, so I stick with medium weight hammers

About the cloth bushings, I believe that the inner vibrations of the shanks are not so much reflected to the hammer with them, but I can be wrong.

Yes the flexibility of shanks when made progressive , have abhuge impact on the tone.

Just test a first grade grand from the best factories, by impacting the shank near the head on a plane or a metal piece. You will notice how the resonance is the same on all notes (progressively changing)

A shank sounding differently have to be replaced. It is not as even than the resonance of carbone shanks but it can be noticed that things have been processed.

Yamaha hammers have a very even shank resonance also, due to the wood selected. (also to the use of a soft glue)

A too stiff shank will give more power but straighten the tone (the attack is shortened)

A very supple shank will open the tone to the max, providing very nice pianissimo nuances, but will limit the power as it will flex too much.

AN idea just passed my mind : wooden shanks could be impregnated with an acrylic resin to compensate too much suppleness.

I will try that soon... we have acrylic resins that are easy to use with all kind of solvents.


When gluing a hammer with white glue, among others glued with hide glue, it can be noticed that the impact tone is less crisp with the white glue.

So I believe there is an important relation between shank and hammer, tone wise, noticed in the impact quality. A lot of inner vibrations may arise in the shank when the string is impacted, the way they are reflected in the strings may change the attack quality.

I think what was meant here is that an action can be too stiff. Wood action components—most noticeably hammershanks—inherently have a certain amount of compliance. This compliance is something pianists are used to and adjust for as they play the piano.

Along with the compliance of the keys these are the two most significant factors in determining an action’s saturation level and, by extension, its ability to drive a piano to high levels of acoustic power. A piano action with flexible keys and hammershanks will reach saturation with only moderate key force. Steinway Ds from the 1960 (give or take a decade) are classic examples of this. Well before the playing level reached forte those actions ran out of “power.” No matter how much harder the keys were pressed there was simply no more acoustical power to be had. They clearly demonstrated that piano actions can have too much compliance; i.e., they can be too flexible. In this case the chief culprit was the spectacularly inept Pratt, Read keyset that made the piano virtually unplayable as a concert instrument. It did, however, have the unintended benefit of teaching us at least the basics of piano action energy transfer.

Encouraged by our experience with these actions we just had to find out just where the opposite limits might be; if keys could be too flexible was it possible that they could also be too stiff? And, indeed, subsequent lab experiments using aluminum keys taught us that actions can also be too stiff. When they are too stiff the transfer of energy from the human finger to the hammer striking the strings is very fast and efficient but it is also very hard on the finger. No human pianist could play this piano for any length of time.

And this brings up Kamin’s point which is, I think, that piano actions using carbon fiber hammershanks might be too stiff. I think, though, that this observation is based on acoustical concerns, not purely physical ones. The assumption seems to be that because carbon fiber composites are reputed to be very stiff then any hammer shank made of carbon fiber is going to be stiffer and therefore less than optimal at transferring energy from the wippen to the hammer when compared to traditional wood hammershanks. “Optimal” in this case being exactly identical to wood. Exactly which wood hammershank might be selected as the standard might present a challenge since there is rather a lot of variability to choose from. In other words, there can be rather a lot of variability in wood-based hammershanks.

No matter. Wood is a natural material and is therefore perceived as inherently superior carbon fiber which, as we all know, is an artificial material. The bigger problem here, I think, is that wood is a familiar material. It is traditional. It is organic and comfortable. Carbon fiber, on the other hand, is new. It is exotic, unknown and unfamiliar. Most of us don’t really know much about it except for what we might have read about it in the popular press. We might know it is used in airplane wings or sailboats. From these sources we know that carbon fiber is incredibly stiff, right? Few of us have any hands-on practical experience with the stuff. We've never gone out to the shop and cut into a piece of carbon fiber. But we do know that it is inherently much stiffer than natural wood—everybody says so—so we can be certain that any hammershank made of carbon fiber is going to be much, much stiffer than its wood counterpart. Right?

And now to burst this little fantasy—and please correct me if I’m wrong here—aren’t the current Wessel, Nickel & Gross hammershanks sized to approximate the average stiffness of their wood counterparts? Though without the variability common to the wood shanks? I’m not the most experienced Wessel, Nickel & Gross action installer here—and I’ve done no exhaustive testing—but based on my simple “feel” test they certainly “feel” about the same. And if one takes the trouble to weigh them it will quickly be seen that their weight is much more consistent.

Most of our fears about these new actions—be it the now almost traditional Kawai or the new Wessel, Nickel & Gross—are based partly on our popular, but incomplete, perceptions of the materials from which they are made and on our still-limited experience with them.

Any new material or technology is at an initial disadvantage when compared with a traditional material or technology. In the case of wood action components the industry has something over 300 years of experience with the stuff. Wood piano actions have evolved about as far as they are going to. We are not going to get much more precision out of the machinery. Nor would it do much to improve the performance of wood-based actions if we could. We’re not going to be able to do anything—at least not in practical terms—to improve their stability in varying climate conditions; wood is hygroscopic and there is nothing we’re going to be able to do about that. As well, we’re probably not going to be able to do anything to solve the variability inherent in felt bushings. And we’re probably not going to go down the road of plastic bushings in wood parts again; Steinway’s mishandling of the Teflon fiasco pretty much took care of that. So the wood-based piano action is now what is called “a mature technology.” It’s not going anywhere soon.

In contrast we’re still on a learning curve with actions made of alternate materials. In spite of Kawai’s now forty years of successful experience with them most pianists (and many piano technicians) have never encountered piano actions made of anything but wood. This is especially true with those whose experience is with and whose preference is for those instruments made in the 1800s and early 1900s. Here anything that smacks of “modern” is to be rejected simply because it is, well, modern. Specifically developments such as this are seen as attempts to draw even more power out of an instrument that has already been pushed to levels of power that can, over the long term, be damaging to human hearing.

Anyone who has followed my work over the years knows that I have taken another path. For some decades now I’ve been preaching the benefits of toning down the harsh and strident sounds of pianos that have been pushed beyond what I see as their natural limits. In my work I stress the importance of reliable performance at the softest limits of pianissimo. And it is for precisely this reason that I welcome the Wessel, Nickel & Gross action. At forte levels of play even relatively large variations in the stiffness of materials are of little consequence. If they are extreme—which is rare—they might be noticed but for the most part the pianist just plays along at levels often exceeding action saturation. It is at pianissimo where even slight variations is regulation consistency and materials consistency become critical. And it is here that I find the Wessel, Nickel & Gross action to be superior to any wood action I’ve ever used. (I would like to have one more hammershank tube with an even thinner wall, though, for those really light treble hammers I usually use.)

My advice to the critics is simply this: Don’t write these things off without a fair trial. You don’t have to give up your acoustical goals no matter what they are. I know some rebuilders who use these parts because they can get more power out the piano. I know others, myself included, who use them because they allow me to further expand the low end of the spectrum. In either case you will find improved consistency and stability.

ddf

To Del, statistically in a "normal" set of wooden shanks there should be about two that are quite similar to WNG composite shanks in strength. The rest will be weaker. Some quite weak.

To Kamin, the tone a wooden shank makes when tapped on a table only somewhat predicts the strength. Early on we studied wooden parts in substantial detail so we could understand what our new composite parts really needed to do. Truthfully, we learned more about wooden parts than we knew going into this project.

As part of that process we measured a number of sets of shanks from several different makers as well as our own. After knowing the strength of different shanks we then tested them using the tap method technicians commonly employ.

What we learned was that the "pitch" test partially predicts the strength however, not entirely. No amount of tapping will allow you so sort the set of wooden shanks so that strength evenly tapers from one end to the other.

Comments we have heard from really good pianists echo Del's comment concerning pianissimo. That is, they really like the evenness when playing soft.

Bruce Clark

Del, I respect to the max the innovations and was often enthusiastic about some tools , methods, and other technical facts I have seen developed in the USA.

Sorry if it sound politically incorrect to state that I am often surprised by the sound quality I hear (on You tube, indeed) from many instruments available in USA.

This really surprises me as some of my colleagues, but immediately, not after a particular listening. And this really makes me wonder where the source of those differences in listening is.

But, evidently there are also very good instruments and tuners very certainly.

I try regularly to find typical US pianos recorded , and I am afraid to said that I find too little of them sounding really nice. When I see a dealer showing his nice rebuild instrument, half of the time he ^play arpeggios with the sustain pedal engaged, this cannot be a demonstration of the tone.

M&H seem to be excellent instruments , with a large scale and a good balance of tone (the treble is a little acid but well present), but yesterday I chased for nice recordings on Internet and I find finally one piano correctly tuned, most others have a straight and square tone that make listening difficult, the singing quality of tone does not seem to be looked for.

I hear you when you say most pianist play in the action saturation zone, I dont know how you backup that information with studies, but I will trust that as being around the FF zone (not the mF dont joke please !).

I would believe that in that case we need that zone, probably because it allow more tone effects, there is a level in FFFF where a "hidden tone" appears that cannot be heard under that level. may be the hammer strike the strings at another point (certainly) .
I tried that action with the carbon shanks, and was indeed surprised not to hear "stiff shanks" as I was expecting, if there is more stiffness it is not as sensible as it may sound.

Then in the end the piano have too much volume at lower level of play and the attack is so fast, the tone is then more clear, a little like when the hammers are impregnated (meaning you find that clear composite always)

The evenness is highly noticeable, and certainly can be appreciated . may be that is only the "woody tone " part that misses my ear.

What you are developping in tone seem to be very interesting, I heard lately a pianist customer of mine saying he was impressed with a recent YC grand, I would suppose you worked on those instruments, possibly.

Where can I hear your instruments please ? I heard yet the vertical which seem to have a very sonorous behavior, and a perfect action. However I like more transparency in tone, The tone of your piano refer to me to the GAVEAU brand in France, reputed until the end, those instruments have a somehow dark tone at the same time a little compact, if you see what I mean. http://youtu.be/4GcGw4wLeOk

I hope you will enjoy the recording.

Best regards

Yes. But I think on a car, it's a bit more reasonable. The shocks might need changing once in the lifetime of the car. The engine and transmission (mechanical components at least) should last beyond the lifetime of the car. Tires need changing, but they are actively being scrubbed against the road. Fluids need changing, but I liken that to tuning a piano (it costs less to change the oil in a car than to get the piano tuned at the recommended intervals!). Once in the lifetime of the car some of the sensors might need replacing, and on a manual transmission one time in the life of the car the clutch (this one is replaced possibly more often than that) and synchros might need replacing.

A piano needs its strings replaced eventually, which is a lot of money but it's not a big deal. However a piano's action needing so much work can be likened to needing an engine overhaul every few years, like an aggressively run motorcycle engine. That's sort of crazy to me.

Anyways, it's always interesting hearing you technicians talk about this stuff, we pianists don't have any clue at all, we just think 99% of pianos out there are terrible XD

Regarding the shank stiffness thing, I guess I'll throw another word in, I've never played a concert grand that feels like the soft tones are hard to control, but I've almost always wished that they had more power at least in some registers. Additionally, while most concert pianos are in pretty good shape, I distinctly remember 2 pianos having a particularly easy to control and consistent action; One was a Shigeru Kawai SK-9, another was a Bosendorfer 225? (don't know if they changed the sizes from 4 years ago), both were brand new. I've played a M&H BB with the composite action though, and wasn't impressed (might have been the room's acoustics though).

No, the amount of regulation needed for actions is akin to getting a tune-up on a car. It should not be a big deal, although there are techs who like to make a big deal of it. I spent an hour or two touching up one of my pianos' regulation today.

So I did see the thing about action centers or bushings or whatever they're called coming loose from the factory, if they're tight though, how many years can they go without replacement? Everything in a car engine that needs replacement is easy to access and cheap, unless you had oil starvation problems or something that destroyed a bearing. Properly maintained engines these days are expected to last decades. heck, they even test the engines at maximum speed for hundreds of hours and they don't fail.

On the other hand, paying a technician to replace the bushings on the hammers or whatever costs a *ton* of money.

So does having a tune up on a car and replacing a bunch of stuff on it. Pianos last a ton longer than a car and cost a fraction of the cost, over the course of 50 years.

I think that although you can reasonably expect a car engine to last only 10-15 years before it becomes especially troublesome and expensive, unless you are doing a lot of hard driving. Much longer than that requires more frequent repairs, and the costs go way up. Our car is getting old, and the service it has required in the past few years has cost more than the service on our pianos would have cost since they were rebuilt. Actually, rebuilding them, excluding refinishing, probably would have cost less. (The car could stand refinishing!)

In contrast, most of the action parts on my pianos were original for the first 50+ years, and except for those in the parts that I replaced, all of the bushings other than the pedal bearings are original after about 90 years.

This is one of the things that has people leery about new materials for pianos. Felt and wood can last a long, long time. Many of the other materials that have been tried have suffered material failure (as opposed to wearing out) or developed other problems long before the traditional materials did.

I am not opposed to new materials, but I cannot say for certain that their longevity is any better than time-tested materials.

I'll be using the WNG parts for a small grand soon. The instrument has a crazy action, so I need the versatility of their system to help create a conventional action. The decision was based on this need, rather than other considerations. It is good to hear (again) good things about the WNG system.

Concerning felt bushings and re-bushing/repinning, there are certainly times for it. In certain circumstances, some flange repinning and knuckle "bolstering" can make a great improvement in conjunction with a serious regulating job, while saving parts money (for parts that may not be so good and be in need of work themselves). Of course, that is assuming that the hammers have enough life left in them.

The synthetics will truly have to do well if they are to compete with the longevity of...
good old wool felt, a hole through some good wood, and a brass pin,
no?!

Had a Kawai with the Millenium II action. Now I have a one year old M&H. The carbon fiber action feels vastly superior to me.
Was considering a Haessler that was near the M&H. The action was a a large factor in the purchase.
Played a carbon fiber cello for two years. Would like to try a piano with a carbon fiber soundboard.

The world is round. It circles the sun. Don't see many powdered wigs in the concert halls these days. The climate is changing. Many women are liberated.
Carbon fiber and other plastics make great piano action. etc. etc.

Well, the point is more that cars are run in a very harsh environment but are still very reliable and trouble free (unless you have an Audi/VW :P), and pianos will give you problems even if they're babied. These days, the drivetrain is expected to be trouble-free for 200000 miles *minimum*.

The difference between car maintenance and piano maintenance is this:

Changing oil is really easy, you unscrew the plug, unscrew the filter, pop a new one on, pour new oil, and it's done. Changing say an oxygen sensor is really easy, you buy a new one, get a 6 dollar sensor wrench, unscrew the old one, screw the new one on. Changing tires takes more effort but you can get the place where you bought your tires from to mount them for very little money. Basically, a lot of maintenance stuff is a matter of buying a new part and turning a few bolts, which anyone who's done so much as held a wrench before can do. Don't want to do it yourself? Take it to a shop, not the stealership, and it's not that bad in terms of cost.

For a piano, it's completely different. Everything is entrusted to the technician to the tune of [large sum of money] per hour, on top of part costs, and since things aren't as simple as bolt it on, it tends to take quite a few high dollar hours to get anything done. My piano has had almost 2000 dollars of such "maintenance" already, and the technician pointed out that the hammer bushings are in pretty bad shape and should be replaced, and something else in the action is extremely worn down and should be replaced too.

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at. The piano action is made of wood, felt and leather with just a bit of metal. Which part of "inherently unstable system" would be hard to understand? What is amazing is not that it needs periodic service but that it works as well as it does.

Given that the system is inherently unstable, and also given that there are no precise specifications or automated way to achieve them, clearly a trained professional will be the choice most people will make to keep the thing running.

However, DIY remains an option for those who wish to invest the time into understanding the process and perhaps working under the guidance of a seasoned professional.

We are working on reliability. That is one of the reasons for the use of the carbon fiber parts. They are demonstrating a much higher level of reliability and requiring much lower service costs. The same can be said for premium quality hammers which last longer and require less voicing and other service.

I'm just lamenting that the design of a piano action (a relatively simple, high tolerance machine) is so inherently unstable. Poor engineering that enables piano technicians to make a living :P

You're pushing too hard on the car metaphor here. You can't expect the same service requirements.

However, having said that...

You don't mention what kind of piano you have. The service requirements on a normal 5 year old family saloon car will be what you mentioned, but a 40 year old one? How about a 5 year old sports car?

What about if you want your 5 year old family saloon to run as it did new? How about the 40 year old one? How about the 40 year old sports car??

A piano action is very stable, a lot more stable than a car. People just do not drive cars with as much precision as they play pianos.

I guess I am pushing the car comparison a bit far, but my point is that a car is designed to be easily serviced, and the things that are not easily serviced are designed to last far past the useful lifespan of the car. On the other hand, it seems like a piano's action (difficult to service, I liken it to the engine) doesn't just need tuning up, the "bearings" inevitably wear out.

I have a 41 year old Kawai KG-3C, but my point is more that the wear on the expensive to replace parts in a piano action seems to happen quickly enough that it becomes a problem for more demanding pianists in say 10 years time, and that is startlingly fast (I just bought a 140k mile, 13 year old car, and the drivetrain runs like clockwork). For example at KU (went there for IIYM) the practice room pianos are maintained by a technician who probably adjusts the actions more often than the typical home piano gets adjustment, yet a lot of them are still really sloppy; I'm no technician and I don't pull the actions to look at them, but I'm guessing the issue is wear, because what else could it be? I know actions are different, and some are just worse than others, but I've played enough pianos (and enough models of pianos) to know that those weren't in good shape.

Frankly, I'm surprised that wool, leather, and wood performs as well as it does, but at the same time, the mechanical strength demands on piano action parts are really quite pathetic, and it would make me really happy to see some better material choices.