Shallow Keybeds....

ShiroKuro

The piano we used at the concert I played in on Tuesday was a small Kimble grand. It had clearly been tuned recently and appears to be well-maintained, but it had a kind of sour edge to the tone that I really didn't like. Kind of like milk just before it goes bad, where you can drink it, it clearly tastes like milk, you can tell it's not going to make you sick, but you also know that fresher milk would be a lot sweeter.

Anyway, that was sort of forgivable but what I really didn't like was the shallow keybed.

Aren't keybeds (key depth??) supposed to standard? Why did this keyboard feel so much more shallow compared to my Yamaha C2? (Granted, my Yamaha C2 has the best action on the planet, I'm not biased or anything... 😃

Anyway, are there pianists who like or prefer the shallower keybed? What's your preference?

Animisha

ShiroKuro

As far as I know, key length can differ from 23 to 45 cm (9-18 inches)!!

How nice that you also can experience sounds as sour. I do as well, and I didn't know how common it was. Especially opera sopranos sometimes have a more, or a less sour timbre, in my experience, that is.

Sgisela

ShiroKuro here are a couple things I found about key dip. The PW thread had some interesting perspectives.

https://sjpianoservice.com/2017/04/key-dip-all-pianists-notice-it-few-think-about-it/

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1125698/optimum%20key%20dip?.html

ShiroKuro

@Animisha re the key bed depth, wow!!! That’s crazy!!!

Re sounds, so you “hear color” in sounds?

Animisha

ShiroKuro

No, no colours. Except for my Pianoteq Bechstein that sounds like blue-white marble (or water). And some sounds are like rust. And when I listen to you playing on the Kimble again, I can hear the sourness, even though I didn't think about it the first time when I listened.

ShiroKuro

Thanks I’ll check out those links!

macuaig

Key Dip, thank you for that term. I thought that’s what you started this thread with, but you were apparently talking about the horizontal length of the keys.

I’m an early student with a Yamaha P115, and yesterday with a very nice dinner hanging in the air, I was able to try my brother’s Kawai upright. Key dip was much shallower on the Kawai, and I’m not sure which I’d prefer. Interesting to know that any piano will likely have a different dip, so it’s just another color in the experience.

I was also curious about the vertical angle of the keys before and after pressing. I’d assumed that all keys at rest would be level, and the down position would be angled on the pivot. But I found references to some pianos having the opposite, that they sit up at rest and are level when down. Can anybody elaborate?

ShiroKuro

macuaig Key Dip, thank you for that term. I thought that’s what you started this thread with, but you were apparently talking about the horizontal length of the keys.

Nope, I wasn’t talking about horizontal length. I was talking about vertical distance traveled when you press down on a key. I think that as the key bed because the bottom, where the key bottoms out, is the “bed.l

But apparently, key dip is the more standard term. It makes sense, key dip describes the movement of the key, whereas key bed describes what the key lies on top of.

I would to know what the key dip is on my Yamaha C2. Or at least what the standard is. Maybe it gets altered on individual piano, for example, after regulating?

A way , I wonder if I can easily find that info…

iternabe

My limited knowledge from watching piano tuning videos on YouTube think key dip is something a piano tuner can and do adjust during regulation?

iternabe

ShiroKuro I would to know what the key dip is on my Yamaha C2. Or at least what the standard is. Maybe it gets altered on individual piano, for example, after regulating?

In this video, the tuner says the key dip should be set to 3/8 inch (9.5mm) to begin with, then fine tuned from there. He's talking about an upright piano. I guess a grand piano shouldn't be much different? He also mentions to key dip change is done by changing the felt or paper push-ins on the front rail pin.

ShiroKuro

I would actually guess that the key dip on a grand would be different (deeper) than on an upright. Maybe that’s not right?

ShiroKuro

@Animisha hmmm. I wonder if we both have a small amount of “Synesthesia” in us. Interesting isn’t it!

Animisha

ShiroKuro Yes, I think we have. I think many people have, just a bit, and few have a lot.

Joseph-Fleetwood

Key dip is not standard. My two pianos have different key dips. The patent action key-dip is something like 8 mm (it's officially 9 but actually I think it's either a bit shallower or the felts underneath are very firm). My standard action is 11mm (officially 10 but it's not...) and also the sound happens much further down the key dip than on the patent action.

Over the years it hasn't been standardized on pianos until relatively recently. I've seen Bösendorfers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that had different key dips to today's models and I'm not sure if they were regulated that way or if it was standard for each era. If I recall correctly Schimmel always had a little deeper key dip, Blüthner was a bit shallower, but the standard we have now is really the Hamburg Steinway specification from the mid-20th Century or a bit later, onwards. Yamaha and Kawai adopted this specification and rolled it out on all their pianos about 40 years ago, and Yamaha have a policy that their Clavinova has the same key dip as the CFX and all the other pianos. I suspect that Bösendorfer today uses the standard key dip but I've never measured it.

A shallower key dip in my experience requires a slightly different technique. It's fairly easy to adapt once you know how but it's a bit disconcerting at first. Of course it's hard to be completely consistent between pianos with different keyboard specifications.