Mt tech likes to say that they only used ivory in the old days because they didnt have plastic. I like the feel of ivory better plastic is slippery. I havent played much on pianos that have the faux ivory so I cant say if I'd like that. I can say theres allot of antique ivory out there. Old elephant tusks go for more than 20K for the pair. Thats what I have on my custom brace of Colt single actions.

I am fine with most plastic. High-grade plastic feels pretty fine. I can feel a difference with ivory but for me it's not "a difference that makes a difference."

I've only played one plastic set that was really terrible, and that was a on a rebuild I was investigating years ago. I just could not keep my fingers on the keys. Weird, I didn't think they got that bad.

Emery: I would love to be able to read the background material behind your assertions about recycling. Could you please post your sources for your assertions about ownership of the recycling facilities and about the higher cost o recycling over mining?

Thanks.

I am also a real hater of all those the-world-is-doomed-if-you-don't-d--as-I-say- people, of the dramaqueens of the next impending catastrophe (there is one every couple of years: global cooling (YES!); global warming; mad cow; overpopulation; end of oil (this one goes around since mid XIX century and will never leave us) etc; I am also really, really sick and tired of the world improving primadonnas who are simply unable to enjoy life and decide instead to be against everything that they themselves cannot afford, feeling very beautiful and very powerful in the process.
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Having said that, to ask for a minimum of common sense (say: respect for the law; love of natural diversity; protection of elephants)is not really a mind-boggling sacrifice; and to pouch elephants is a very serious crime.

So the statements commented sound to me not different then "I like Porsches and provided I can have one, who cares from whom it has been stolen".

Also incredible to me is that there are people out there who do not see the difference between eating cow meat or pork belly (a commodity in every sense of the word, also in the financial one) and the forbidden endangering of a animal species. One has the best right not to be a vegetarian and more power to him, but the difference is plain to see: pigs are not endangered.

So I would suggest anyone to enjoy his big SUV, his steak and potatoes, his big house with air con , his big piano and, in the end, his common sense; but to use his common sense also to understand that it cannot be right, and it cannot even be intelligent, to destroy animal species for a very short term advantage.

Again, elephant protection makes legal ivory available in bigger quantities in the long term, thus more affordable, perfectly legal and satisfying for everyone.

I'd rip them ol' tusks out of the socket with my bare hands like the caveman that I am.

My assertions about ownership and costs are my own observations around my own area and may not be applicable everywhere as a generalization. There are several studies indicating that recycling aluminum is very cost effective but they are looking at the "end process only", that is, the remelting of it VS creating it from ore. They do not take into account the fact of how much manpower energy and transportation involved to collect transport, process, re-transport ect.. When I see a huge gas guzzling truck come by every week with 3 employees on board toss a blue box worth of aluminum (maybe a lb ) from every house it doesnt seem cost effective if alcan can only give a rebate of aprox 1 cent per pop can. My main objection to this is that we were sold on the idea of recycling originally that it would be a big cost savings that will be passed to us as consumers...it never happened. So now people are making jobs and profit off our work. Its a rip-off.

I once tried to calculate how much a garbage/recycling company can earn by comparing how long a garbage truck spends picking up garbage on a route and the total cost of the garbage bills paid for that route. I tell you what - I should have opened a garbage/recycling company. There's a reason companies engage in huge bidding wars for the "privelege" of being a county or cities garbage company. I bet the owners of those companies have no problem being able to afford their own elephant farm to supply them with as many piano keytops as they want. It's extremely difficult to have sympathy for companies (who are in it for money) that offer recycling and then make you feel bad if you don't do it (less profit for them).

This thread has been enlightening. My piano, vintage 1921, has real ivory keytops and I really do prefer them to various plastic keytops I have tried. The feel of ivory (some resistance to sliding and an almost grainy feel) should be reproducible using advanced material engineering. Sooner or later some company will invest time and money and produce a keytop material that is even better than ivory. Such a material may have micron size holes and be layered to wick moisture. Be that as it may, killing elephants for ivory is evil. The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sog...dE_fqjOsKNWp.04 shows a little of the intelligence of elephants. Killing such an animal for a slightly better keytop is unthinkable.

Ah - you have the exact same year piano that I have and the ivories are probably in the same condition. I feel a great confidence when I play on those keys, whereas on my Yamaha I frequently miss and have second doubts about whether that leap or this leap will end up with a slippery mistake. They are very grainy and it helps absorb moisture from the fingers.

I'm not so sure that I would use intelligence level as a criteria for killing or not killing : it seems a little bigoted against the more stupid animals out there (if there are any - after all, how can we truly judge what degree of intelligence is needed before we judge an animal worthy of our "sympathy and empathy": sure, my Tuna is "dolphin safe" and that's fine and dandy because Dolphins are cute, and smart, and playful oh how nice - but why is my Tuna not Tuna-safe? What makes it any more right to kill and eat a Tuna than a Dolphin? Probably because of the perceived "intelligence" issue).

And we're really not seriously talking about going out and killing elephants for a single keyboard - many people have pointed out the legal avenues for procuring ivory keytops in the modern weepy age that doesn't require killing an elephant. The fact still remains that we kill animals and people every day in the name of food, luxury, beliefs, oil, clothing, racism, house-hold goods and most of the benefits we receive from these killings are temporary : it fills our stomach for a few hours (there's an old saying, and I won't mention what country, that states "if it's back is to heaven,it's edible"), it adorns our shoes and purses until we tire of them and buy new ones on a whim, etc. At least an elephant's tusks can supply many, many pianos with a product that will last for at least 100 years if properly maitained, if not more. The lasting value of the elephant's sacrifice seems more valuable than the temporary gains we receive from our killing of "stupid" animals.

I know some people have said they can't tell a real difference with plastic to ivory and I'm wondering if they are using new ivory or slightly older ivory in their tests. I think our 1921 ivory keytops have a better feel than new ivory, personally. The aging helps the feel.

"They do not take into account the fact of how much manpower energy and transportation involved to collect transport, process, re-transport ect."

I'd say all these cost will unavoidably been taken into account in the price that Alcoa & Co. pay for the material they buy, so in the recycled aluminium you buy all the costs which are not externalized are already in.

Having said that, the recycling craze seems a bit questionable to me too. In Germany there is a recycling system which calls for the separation BY HAND of the various recyclable material from household bags meant for those materials.

The system is, as you might expect, extremely expensive. With the time new more authomatized systems have become available, but they cannot be used because the public bodies responible for the recycling have already stipulated long term contracts with the firms doing the "recycling by hand"; this in turn was necessary to allow the firms to make the very heavy investment necessary to operate in the first place.

There is a say in Italy, that "better is the enemy of good". Sometimes these issues just seem to slip out of hand and become an exercise in money wasting.

Having said that, I am absolutely contrary to killing an elephant for his ivory, or to illegally killing animals for any scope whatsoever (general poaching etc.).

But animals are generally there, sorry to say, to provide food for other animals, including the most advanced of them all.

When I eat a good steak (medium rare for me, thanks; just olive oil and salt....) from a non endengered cow species, hopefully raised and dispatched in a halfway civilized way, I do not do anything cruel or hypocritical.

I just follow the big plan of Nature.

bluntness i can excuse, but lack of ethics reminds me of the dung beetles that live off the elephant's droppings - tasteless

For those who don't like the feel and look of plastic key tops, there's always Scotch-Brite. And yes, I'm serious.

I just switched from plastic to old ivory (1929). There is a difference, but it really doesn't matter much. Regulation is vastly more significant than the key surfaces.

I do have a little different feeling than most -- I had a disc collapse in my neck, so I have some nerve damage -- very little feeling in my right index finger, maybe about half and half for the thumb and middle finger. I don't think it affects my playing really -- the feedback is from the ears, not the fingers. Not that I was any good to begin with....

I try to play as many different keyboards as I can, because I've found that getting too accustomed to one instrument makes me absolutely suck playing another. (That's instead of just my ordinary moderately sucking....) It's so weird -- it's like a different action blows out my memory. That's why I also have the little Kawai.

I really despise the holier than thou types who want to control other people's lives. I recycle, and turn off the lights, drive a high mileage car, and lots of that stuff, but not because I believe in the eco-religion. We may do many of the same things, but my reason is different: I'm a cheapskate. ;-)

The African Elephant is not an endangered species. It is classified as vulnerable. They can and are hunted legally and the ivory are LEGAL. There are places in Africa that there is an overpopulation of elephants. When they raid crops of substinence farmers and become "problem animals" they are shot and the government keeps the LEGAL ivory to sell. The meat is given to local villagers, same goes for legally hunted elephants. Each hunter also leaves in the neighborhood of 20-50k per elephant to the local economy. It is easy to say nice elephants when they are not trampling on your food, family and dwelling and from ten thousand miles away. Remember, the people who live in elephant country have to put food on the table also. They are animals and a resource no different than the oil in the ground and in the Gulf. If they become a nuisance or problem they are dealt with no differently than a Mountain Lion coming down into an elementary school looking for water during a severe drought. Poachers are another matter altogether.

Note to those who wish to respond to certain posts: all but the last four (plus this one) are more than three years old.

A crime to the elephant and to that poor marsuipal! OUCH

Ivory is icky. Too rough and fragile. Plastic is smooth but is not porous. Composite materials are best.



Promise me you won't get upset when the environment craps out because everyone else litters the oceans and drives V8s

It turns out that the sky's not really falling. This is our third cooler than average summer in a row.

Yes it's been nice, but not for the rest of the country. Anyway, local climate...

Give it another 30, 50 years... Even if we don't have climate change, there are plenty of other growing problems.