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Must be a big hit......the web site seems to have crashed!

I have mine on order. With the slightly anemic Can dollar, plus taxes and shipping, came to 110.22 CAN!!!!!!!!!!

US purchasers GOTTA feel better!

Not entirely a beginner's book, since much of the measurement and specs require fairly expensive equipment. I mean, how many novices are going to fork out 75 buck (CAN price) for a gram gauge????

Personally, I'm interested in his take on simple stuff like drop, let-off, jack position. Reblitz just states the rule, and sometimes pretty uncompromisingly: Drop, for example, must "ALWAYS" be more than let-off, according to R. But there are many techs who just don't follow that rule.

I'd say that my book complements Reblitz rather than replacing it altogether. I would agree with you that Reblitz is a good resource. I learned from it, afterall.

Hi Isaac, you said that "indeed playing fast and ppp is a challenge then, but I played an extremely heavily loaded keyboard recently, to find that strangely the sensation of inertia provided at the key helps the play-ability." I agree completely. Keys loaded with lead can give you that sensation of the piano equalizing your efforts and somehow smoothing your phrasing.

I give an example of unequal speaking lengths in pre-WW II Cs and Ds. So far as how this affects unison tuning, I don't know a better way than simply tuning them to sound as clean as possible. What I find fascinating is that intentionally putting string partials in opposing phase (making them beat against each other slowly) while keeping the primary partials in phase (at least theoretically) increases sustain much as the soundboard wave impedance does.

Y book: I like that!

HI Mario, analyse and exploring of unison should be fascinating.

I thought that phase was not possible as soon as impair number of strings are used. I heard the Borgato (4 strings) for instance and find the unison not very pleasing, too compact, may be.
The difference due to iH allow probably for a certain amount of tone opening , but I suppose that depending which partial we choose to couple/phase primarily , we obtain differences in tone envelope and more or less "musical " piano tone.

I thought of that heavy loaded keyboard , in the end I wonder if , as a large part of our playing is simply impacting the key, and that the inertial resistance perceived at that moment tell us what speed the hammer is capable of, if the raised primary inertia is not providing then a help to better perceive that hammer resistance.
Then the heavily loaded key rebound easily for stacatto, and once thrown , is easy to get along with , even if sort of have a "life of its own" , limiting the possibilities of minute variations in acceleration.

When one think that it have been proved that the key inertia is for not much in the global action inertia, that left us with a not much explored way, the one of the resiliency of the action material, and its effect on the power of the attack.

Pfeiffer find that a mass falling on a key attain soon the limit of efficiency of the action , before mF , may be. But the pianist is mastering the fall of its own weight and if some resistance is offered to him in a predictable and natural way, this helps him, the sensation I had is that the correlation of masses was better, raising play-ability.

Best wishes.

P.S I like to take the devil's defense

I believe that this difference in unison lenght kept in some actual pianos, Bechstein comes to mind,
Sure tuning mean making a clean sound, the more distorded it is at soft level the more catchy for the ears, then FFF nuances are crashing and saturating, loss of clarity is so strong that voicing the Fff may just keep power, while lowering much of the top spectra.

A tendency to do so for impregnated hammers, may be because partial content power is raised at soft level.

It is always possible to provide a dynamic plague, but having tone changes is asking the soundboard to provide it, while with the natural hysteresis of hammer felt, I perceive a much richer dynamic behavior.

At the pianist tactile level, impregnation raise so much the power sensation I understand well why it is so much used (and I use it myself with good results, sometime just to raise harmonic content of relatively dull pianos)
We need that natural dense part under the crown to have a lively FFFF , the one that pusch the panel to twist and modify the vibration plane orientation (pure speculation).

Btw do you say a little on scaling ? Octave progression, iH choices, strike lines ?

Do you plan to make addendums ? With a virtual version of the book that would be easy.. (I hate promoting virtual books BTW, I have much respect for the books trade, libraires, bibliotheques, etc... it seem that for technical books Pdf is the support of choice, today...

Presumably you're referring to me.

At no stage did I say that Igrec's book was "all wrong". To the contrary, I specifically added that I would probably end up buying it. (In spite of my currency, which is almost 1:10 against the Dollar.)

All I did was question why a novice would buy Igrec's book rather than Reblitz. Your first answer (teaching to fish vs. giving a fish) was actually quite insightful for me, and I wish you'd left it at that.

But then you berate me of some kind of "imagined" membership, not even being a technician. Well, according to the forum's description, it is not only for technicians, but also "a place to post technical questions about the piano". Exactly how many tunings, regulations, repinnings, rebuilds, exams or whatevers does one require to become a "member" here?

And for all us Canadians.... I forget to include UPS and brokerage fees of 38.00 bringing the total to a GRAND

$140.00

That's what you'll pay in Toronto!!!!!

No, I was not.

Just cracking the book now.

Yes it is appropriate for the (intelligent but interested and willing) novice.

AND it contains quite a bit of new, more precise information on piano design.

It addresses exactly the sort of questions that come to mind reading Reblitz; that is, a more precise analysis of key weight, let-off, drop, dip, escapement, pin friction, etc....

Very helpful indeed.

But as a Canadian, I wish there was a shipping method that skirted enormous and entirely bogus "brokerage fees." Perhaps provide the option of sending it to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver via the U.S. postal service?

We do offer USPS First Class International Mail and USPS Priority International Mail shipping on this book for international orders. From what I understand this does save some on the customs fees to Canadian addresses.

I am writing this from the Philadephia area, where I am hanging out with an outstanding group of piano technicians, including Mario Igrec. He sent out a copy of his book to me, but it was still in the mail when I left home to come here. So it was here that I first saw the book "in the flesh", and I found it to be quite an impressive work.

Mario and I came to an agreement that I would be distributing the book in Canada through my business Piano Forte Supply. So for anyone in Canada who wants to get their copy for a lot less than the $140.- quoted, you can do that very soon. Stay tuned, as they say....

Hi Isaac,

That's a lot of observations and I don't have the time to address them all. I do not cover scaling. I do cover inharmonicity and stretch, and show a chart of inharmonicity curves of all notes A in a 1923 Steinway A III. The chart is surprising (or not if you are familar with the topic) in two ways:

1. In the bass, harmonics are shifted in pitch irregularly, forming a jagged curve

2. From A2 up the inharmonicity curves almost overlap each other because on those notes the coefficient of inharmonicity (b in R. Young's formula) increases by a factor between 3 and 4. At 4, which is a square of the relationship between adjacent partials, or 2, there would be no interval inharmonicity and inharmonicity curves would be fully overlapped. IOW, those octaves could be tuned with the same stretch on all partial levels. I find it fascinating that this piano was scaled so perfectly, at least so far as the progression of inharmonicity is concerned, in 1923 when inharmonicity was understood only empirically.

I don't go into strike line calculations except to encourage bringing it in in the lower treble if that's warranted, which I find to be the case in many pianos, especially older Steinways. You may have observed this yourself, but curving the strike line toward the V bar in the killer octave improves volume and sustain.

I intend to post bonus materials on www.pianosinsideout.com, but no promises.

Thanks Mario, I have only seen iH match proposed by a scaling software made in the 80" years, but it seem to be one of the concerns with the lenght progression ratios that are used. The theory ask for very high iH in treble, and moderate in mediums, if not we could use way longer strings in the treble without problems , as it was done on some older scales, with sort of negative iH progression at some point (Pleyel comes to mind there)

But I am certainly not an expert in scaling, always have been disturbed with the apparent absence of direct correlation I seem to find between the methods promoted in US and the ones known here.

Not exactly "different" but thinking in pounds and inches is not possible easily

Do you have access to high speed camera ?

Regards



Then, on the practical side of things, many are raising the lenght of c88 , something that make the last notes more audible probably.

Thanks for clarifying, Dan. My apologies - whoever else irked you by commenting on "the wrongness of it all" (specifically in this thread), I must have missed that.

Regards,
Mark

I am so glad that the book is available finally. Can hardly wait to get my copy.

Hi Isaac,

Back from MARC. What a whirlwind of activity. I enjoyed it very much.

I read Paul Poletti's paper and like his linearized model of balanced weights. Whatever makes it easier to follow the descriptions of inertia helps. Most people have trouble relating to the moment of inertia in a rotating model. I may respond to what he talks about with a white paper of my own, so don't want to spoil the fun here.

Certainly what you observed in a heavily leaded keyboard has been my observation too in some pianos. I will incorporate my ideas about this in that paper.

Yes, I do cover uneven speaking lengths as a solution manufacturers have exploited in the past to improve sustain in the melody octave. I relay Arthur Benade's explanation of why uneven lengths produce that improvement. Something most people don't realize is that in Steinways that have apparent uneven lengths in the lower treble section in which the notches run almost parallel with the bridge itself, the lengths are slightly uneven in the top treble section as well, except there by the notches being angled in the opposite direction. The lowest notches can be angled pretty aggressively, and they become perpendicular to the strings toward the top note. This is visible in the illustration in the book (Fig 109, p. 42).

So far as bridge rocking, do you mean that the right-most string in unisons in grands tends to be least stable? I briefly explain Dan Levitan's theory why this is so on right-most strings both in grands and verticals.

I've recorded video at 120 fps and that's really not fast enough. I'll need to locate one for an upcoming project. You have it?

Hello, Mario, that is interesting that a real pianist is able to look for those things in depth.

This may allow to fulfill the "hole" between what theories say and what pianists like .

I do not own a high speed camera, 120 fps is attained with a digital camera ?

I certainly wish to see things as the coupling of unison but with video, sound sample and spectra analysis provided.
Idem for the behavior of the action under different forces.
I wish to see how much the hammer have a licking motion, if it can change direction at some speed, for instance (have the shank enough strenght to spring back before the impact.

etc... The camera only is not enough as I suppose very strong supports and setups have to be used.

For the sound sample analysis the software "Spear" provide lot of tools and allow to visualise well the behavior of the partials.

I am planned to make recordings with differnt types of unisons, I made yet some but only to show coupling at the 2nd (and up) partial level.
I must do that with fundamental coupling priority, and with attack tuned more or less strong.
On a vertical , less possibilities exist, I will try to do that on a grand also.

Best regards

Hello Mario, I just wanted to point that whatever string is tuned first, the bridge tend always to come toward the tuner during the tuning.

tuning a sort of canvas, with the next left string tuned first when going up the scale seem to favor better stability for the precedent unison . The last string I tune is the right one, actually, if I had to tune it first I would need to tune it high and it will lower when the other are tuned. of course I talk of so small motion that tuning can be done that way, without trouble.