Would Ya Look At That?!
I saw something a very interesting today. It was no doubt born years ago from the same tireless innovation that poured into making endless variations of something that still haunts us today. I'm talking, of course, about console actions.
Many technician's first years are filled with them. Split keys, stacked keys, shrunken parts, capstans of all styles, hammers shanks the size of toothpicks. Yes, we cut our teeth on these marvels of mediocrity.
I thought I'd seen it all... I was wrong.
I can just picture it some 50 years ago. The design team of a nameless action company standing around a workbench pondering some new way to elevate the console action design to out do their competitors. Suddenly inspiration hit.
"Let's just do the opposite of what everyone else is doing!"
That moment of inspiration eventually took the shape of an action that's missing as much as it's had added.
Here are the highlights.
- There no hammer butts. Checking is done by a radiused hammer tail like those found on grand pianos.
- The jacks are oriented horizontally. There is no other piano design with horizontal jacks. Madness!
- The damper levers are "L" shaped and go under the back of the whippen. Hence, there are no damper spoons. Ooh! Bonus! The damper lift is regulated by the damper lever felt thickness. Ooh. Bummer.
- The keys don't have capstans. There are inverted capstans on the front the whippens with an easy to access flat head screw adjustments. Nice!
- The keys are really, really short. There are no weights in the keys and the "up" and "down" weight barely work.
In a similar move, perhaps without quite the same level of expertise, the bottom half of a hammer was loped off to fit over a damper head. Classy!
As always, it's refreshing to see something new. And, this action design has survived now for more than fifty years... And is still going.
If you've found something refreshingly new lately, leave it in the comments.