Hi MMDers,  I'm interested to see some discussion regarding solenoid
pianos.  Having recently sold my last 'real' player piano in favour of
a Disklavier I know how those hauliers must have felt in the thirties
when they traded in their steam wagons for internal combustion trucks !
Not all good news by any means.

Of course, the biggest cross the Disklavier mechanism has to bear is
that it gets fitted into Yamaha pianos.  Considering they've been in the
business for a hundred years they should be able to do better by now !
The mechanism itself isn't too hot either.  I accept all the arguments
about the hammer being free of interference when it hits the string but
there is something seriously amiss about the characteristics of the
solenoid actuator.  Try and make a Disklavier play softly and it becomes
very soggy.  The impression is that, unlike a pneumatic, the solenoid
has a 'soft means slow' response characteristic.  Did they know about
this effect in the 20's, one wonders.  Am I right in thinking that even
the Telelectric had a semi-rotary actuator ?  Intuitively, one feels
this should have a better characteristic.

The modern solution must be to use active feedback which is presumably
why this technique is being applied to the latest version.  In the
meantime, there's a whole generation of Disklaviers around that, in my
opinion, are rather less than wonderful.

Richard Stibbons MIMIT
Cromer, Norfolk
England