Re: Duo-Art Playing Too Loud
By William M Chapman
Pete, (and others interested) I was glad to see your posting 8-96-15 on Duo-Art dynamics.
I too have been through this phenomena with the Duo-Art. All musical values were lost with exaggerated dynamics even though I used factory settings for the accordions. Ugh! I ended up rebuilding the stack and setting the valves precisely to .032 inches--well almost precisely. The piano then picked up soft notes which enabled me to reduce the zero level to 4.5"in turn starting the dynamic curve lower. Still the dynamics were unrealistic so I altered the settings on the accordions and got rid of that ridiculous jump in loudness. It took lots of trial and error to find something satisfactory. Self-adhesive felt stops were used in the accordions to save turning the screws on each trial.
Incidentally, with factory settings on the accordions, the test roll played fairly well except for the progression of chords that are repeated with increasing loudness. I used the chords as a reference for narrowing the throw on the accordions until they sounded smooth in increase of loudness. Incidentally, I noticed that the most convincing DAs I've heard sound only mezzo-forte while playing with only #4 collapsed.
I believe much of the answer lies in the hammers. IMHO the felt hardens over time and the hammer becomes incapable of delivering a moderate force to the string. Instead of the felt compressing on impact with the string, the hammer hits with its full momentum delivered to the string all at once--not moderated by the cushion of soft outer felt. Maybe the characteristics of hardened hammers is such it accounts for the exponential jump in dynamics--it would be interesting to explore this but quite complicated. I have the oscilloscope but not the patience. Steinways tend to get "crashy" as they age, maybe okay in the concert hall, but not useful at home. New Steinways do not sound crashy at the factory.
I'm just about to tackle the hammers with emphasis on softer felt. A few people I've talked to in England believe that pianos were voiced softer in earlier days--that would explain a lot. I hope there will be more postings on DA dynamics.
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(Message sent Fri 16 Aug 1996, 17:38:30 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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