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I noticed on my piano, the last damped note (F6) has a damper felt that has been pushed over to the side a bit so that it doesn't touch the last string. I assumed something was misaligned so it's something I had a note to talk to the tuner/tech about.



But then I saw the following on Youtube:



See the last damped note on the lower left. It looks like the last damper felt is cut off intentionally?

That got me thinking...is it intentional to leave one string of the last damped note undamped? Maybe as a way of easing into the undamped section?

That looks to me like an unintentionally mis-shaped damper. I think that all three strings should be damped.

Regards,

That is so interesting. It looks intentional to get more duplex scale like resonance. On my old restrung Kawai KG-6C, I noticed that the rebuilder hadn't weaved the duplex scale dampening felt across the same strings as before and with the current GX-7. I checked the frequency of the duplex strings that weren't dampened, and they did overlap with the notes where they stopped placing dampers on the strings. I noticed that when I replaced the felt back on, that the transition from undampened notes to dampened notes was smoother. It was really subtle, but an improvement nonetheless.

Does it create a problem when you play ?

It has been said that the notes adjacent to struts tend to be weak. I have no idea whether this applies to any Bosendorfer and Yamaha pianos or whether that phenomenon has anything to do with the shape of the damper felts in question.

The gentleman who replaced the felts in my piano damped all three strings in agreement with Bruce.

Do any other members have "2 of 3 string" dampers?

Greetings,
It is not uncommon for the last damper to be fitted like this. It seems an attempt to. blend the undamped tope section with the lower and I have seen numerous pianos with the last damper intentionally cut to do that.
Regards,

My piano has all three strings damped

Thanks all. This was an interesting question to me because I've usually seen all three strings damped, and on mine it certainly LOOKS like a misalignment, as opposed to the CFiii screenshot where it seems intentionally cut smaller. Good to know it's potentially intentional. I'll check with my tech for his thoughts, but my inclination is to leave it as-is.


That's the $64k question, right? No, no problem whatsoever. I just want to know whether it's WAI. When I strike the string, the undamped single string is pretty prominent, it sounds just like the adjacent fully undamped F#6. Which I assume means it's doing what it's supposed to (i.e., it would be a lot louder if all three strings were undamped).

As a related aside, I was in a Steinway gallery recently and noticed all of those pianos are umdamped all the way down to E6, which is the farthest I've seen. That's what piqued my interest in the first place.

I disagree, it looks to me this is the design.

The lefty side of the felt is curved to perfect.

The last 6-7 dampers all have felts that lean a little bit to the right (you can see on the third to last one above, the felt doesn't curve around the last string entirely). It made me wonder if the last one was just a bit more leany than the others.

It is intentional.

Peter Grey Piano Doctor

I've seen this on too many new pianos for it to be unintentional!

My 225 has the same thing going on. It even has it going on with the adjacent damper as well (to a lesser degree). It seems like they intentionally graduated this effect.

I love it. Case closed, thanks all!

I didn't take a pic, but the last damper on my Yamaha C7 is that way too.

Rick

[img]https://imgur.com/a/BUHdwbP[/img]

Above link is my C2X. I noticed that and asked my tech last time. That's what i was told.

Technical standpoint:
He said it is intentional for the smoother transition as it is the last note before totally (100% covered well) undampered (on the even higher treble)

Tone standpoint:
It will still sounded undampered on F6 as two out of three strings are dampered.

I learned something more today. Thanks for the topic.

Regards,

I have this 😁 well I think...

What Ed and Peter said. Intentional for purposes of blending sections.

On my Schimmel upright as well, the same thing.