Disklavier

I bought a new Disklavier MX500 upright with the DKC50R controller two years ago. I like it a whole lot and it has become a big hobby for me. However, I have several problems my dealer's local Disklavier technician has not been able to resolve for me. He's coming this Friday to tune the piano (and hopefully he will have time to tinker some more with the problems). Maybe some of you have suggestions for me to give him to try. Here are the problems:
1. Pedal thump
2. Solenoid clicks
3. Double strike
Now the details on my problems by the number:
1. I learned that the sustain pedal on most Disklaviers is either all the way up or all the way down and that it moves fast and hard. It can't properly interpret half pedal or gentle pedal movement information like I find in the Piano e-Competiton midi files. You need one of the very expensive Pro models for gentle or half pedal movement. On mine (an ordinary consumer model Disklavier), the sustain pedal moves with a thump that can be heard all the way on the other side of the house. The noise is fairly easy to ignore most of the time because of the sound of a lot of notes playing at once but during quiet passages, the pedal thumping is very noticeable. At times when the pedal goes down while several notes are being held it sets all the strings to vibrating. I can only describe the noise that makes as a "low roar". I guess it is the closest thing to "white noise" that a piano can make.
2. After a key is struck and the key goes back up, the solenoid plunger under the key bounces back with a small click. It sounds like the solenoid plunger bounces and bottoms out as the spring inside returns the plunger to its normal resting place. It's as if the plunger should have a damper or a piece of felt or something to soften the noise of the plunger bottoming out. This noise is most noticeable when you play the piano yourself, whether you have the power to the controller on or not. When you let go of a key and it returns back up, you can hear that little click coming from down under the back of the key. It is also noticeable when you playback simple little tunes. When you play the really busy stuff like you find on PianoDisks, all the other noise pretty well masks the solenoid click. For example, when I play Erica Muncy's simple Christmas pieces downloaded from http://www.muncyfamily.com/ I clearly hear the key clicks. My local technician is completely stumped by this
 problem. Does Yamaha sometimes change the design of its solenoids? Did they maybe leave out a part or use the wrong size part like Chrysler did when they built my truck transmission? (It took Chrysler months to come out with a tech note on their mistake.)
3. When I play a Yamaha PianoSoft disk or a midi file some hammers double strike the strings resulting in a bad note. It does not happen when you play the keyboard yourself (except if you play a note very softly when the escapement is badly out of adjustment). The only cure seems to be for my tech to make a very delicate adjustment to the screw on the escape mechanism of each offending key. That seemed to work for a while but then the problem came back on different keys. My technician was out to tune and adjust the piano last May. After running a bunch of my Yamaha PianoSoft disks for company on Memorial Day I noticed that the double strike problem returned for a bunch of the low notes that had not been a problem before. After calling my local technician's answering machine for several months, he came and spent 2 hours making adjustments. After he left I noticed that five keys he adjusted still had the problem. I hope to have him tweak them to get them fixed. However, I wonder how
 long it will hold and if it's just going to come back. Why should the adjustment be so critical for when the control box is playing the piano and not when you play the keyboard yourself? What's the difference between the way a note is played when a key is struck the normal way by a finger pressing down the front end versus a solenoid pushing the back end down? You would think the key escapement mechanism wouldn't know the difference.
 
Walt Sharpe
Stockton NJ

 




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I'm not so sure the problem is in the Disklavier.  All three items you have
mentioned are typical adjustments that often need to be made on an upright
piano that gets played a lot.  Is your house very dry?  Pedals go out of
adjustment all the time; and if your keys are noisy even when the Disklavier
is not turned on, the the problem is in the piano action.  It could be that
the action screws need tightened.  The double strike can happen after the
new felt settles thereby creating a need to have the "touch" adjusted.
Your technician can also call Yamaha at 800-854-1569  while he is in your
home if he is having a problem.

Should the piano still remain unsatisfactory, there are other piano
technicians in New Jersey.  Either call Yamaha at the above telephone number
to recommend someone, or look in the Yellow Pages for a Piano Techncians
Guild member with RPT status.  You can find a list of these folks at
www.ptg.org  Every piano technician I ever met works differently so you may
have to try a few before you find one you like.

Carol Beigel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walter Sharpe" <wlsharpe@...>
To: <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 10:10 PM
Subject: [disklavier] 3 mysterious Disklavier problems


> I bought a new Disklavier MX500 upright with the DKC50R controller two
years ago. I like it a whole lot and it has become a big hobby for me.
However, I have several problems my dealer's local Disklavier technician has
not been able to resolve for me. He's coming this Friday to tune the piano
(and hopefully he will have time to tinker some more with the problems).
Maybe some of you have suggestions for me to give him to try. Here are the
problems:

> 1. Pedal thump
> 2. Solenoid clicks
> 3. Double strike

Walter,

Did you every get any resolution to your pedal thumping? Was it a 
mechanical adjustment that a you, the user, could do or will a 
technical pro be needed?

I assume the original MIDI e-competition files support the following, 
but don't know if your particular controller supports the same: 
Function | Piano Part | Rcv Ch = <change to HP>. HP is half or 
continuous pedal on Channel 3, with Left Hand on Channel 1 and Right 
Hand on Channel 2. Obviously, GM files out there in the wild do not 
abide by this DKV model, and thus the on/off (0/127) thumping!!!

A great filter utility would be to take out MIDI Controller 64 data 
from existing Piano Channel and move it to Channel 3. Anyone game or 
is this already avail? Manually this can be done with sequencing 
software.

Fred Kagel, Dir.
Freehold Computer Training Ctr.
www.freeholdcomputer.com
 

Walter Sharpe wrote:
> I bought a new Disklavier MX500 upright with the DKC50R controller 
[snip]
 Here are the problems:
> 1. Pedal thump
> 2. Solenoid clicks
> 3. Double strike
> Now the details on my problems by the number:
> 1. I learned that the sustain pedal on most Disklaviers is either 
all the way up or all the way down and that it moves fast and hard. 
It can't properly interpret half pedal or gentle pedal movement 
information like I find in the Piano e-Competiton midi files. You 
need one of the very expensive Pro models for gentle or half pedal 
movement. On mine (an ordinary consumer model Disklavier), the 
sustain pedal moves with a thump that can be heard all the way on the 
other side of the house. The noise is fairly easy to ignore most of 
the time because of the sound of a lot of notes playing at once but 
during quiet passages, the pedal thumping is very noticeable. At 
times when the pedal goes down while several notes are being held it 
sets all the strings to vibrating. I can only describe the noise that 
makes as a "low roar". I guess it is the closest thing to "white 
noise" that a piano can make.

Fred,
Thank you for asking. No, I did not get resolution to the pedal thumping. My tech has been trying to resolve it but he is very busy and hard to get to come out to work on it. He said that my model does not do half pedal like the much more expensive Pro models do. It's either all the way down or all the way up. However, he asked me to give him some sample midi segments where it is particularly noticeable on a floppy disk so he could take it back to the store and try it on some other pianos. Sure enough, he reported that while the other pianos like my model thump softly if you listen for it, they are not as loud as mine. He adjusted it as best as he can and said he would check with Yamaha for more ideas. This has been going on for 2 years now, not just with the tump but also the solenoid clicks and double strike. I think the plan is to try a number of things to solve the problems, one at a time, progressing from the simple and inexpensive to the more complex and costly. This is a good
 strategy but when it takes 6 months to go from one step to the next, that's a bit much. Like I said, he's very busy, backed up with work and I want to be patient with him, I was hoping someone in the group would have some ideas. Apparently, it's the first time my tech has encountered these problems and he's going through the learning curve. I was hoping I could help him accelerate the curve. I am fairly handy with mechanical and electronic things but have resisted getting my own hands on the works because I don't want to be blamed for anything going wrong while it is still being resolved under the warranty. One of the first things I would do would be to try putting felt on thumping pedal parts but when I suggested that to my tech, he was hesitant to do anything except step-by-step under explicit instructions from Yamaha. I would have no problem with that if it weren't for the fact that it's 6 months between visits.
 
I am a little puzzled by what you wrote: "...Function | Piano Part | Rcv Ch = <change to HP>. HP ..." and the discussion of channel 2 and 3. With my Disklavier, whatever is on channel 1 goes to the piano, all other channels go to my stereo system which is plugged into the large phone jack on the back of the piano. When I get a midi that has one hand on channel 1 and another hand on channel 2, like a lot of stuff on perfessorbill.com I have to use Cakewalk to redirect tracks 2 and 3 to channel 1. Otherwise, I hear part of it coming from my stereo and part of it coming from the Yamaha acoustic piano. Do you mean I could have just gone into the setup menu of my controller and told it to send midi data on channels 2 and 3 to the acoustic piano instead of the speakers? What I had to do with Bill Edwards stuff (www.perfessorbill.com) to get it to play correctly was merge the 3 separate channels into one and delete the duplicate and triplicate pedal instructions and then reduce the
 velocity. (I could have also left all 3 tracks and just reassigned track 2 and 3 to channel 1 and deleted all pedal information from 2 of the three tracks)  Attached is a zip file with his original and my copy of his 12th Street Rag after I had to modify it to play correctly on my piano. You will see what I mean if you compare the files with Cakewalk or some other program that lets you get into it.
-Walt

fkagel <fkagel@...> wrote:
Walter,

Did you every get any resolution to your pedal thumping? Was it a 
mechanical adjustment that a you, the user, could do or will a 
technical pro be needed?

I assume the original MIDI e-competition files support the following, 
but don't know if your particular controller supports the same: 
Function | Piano Part | Rcv Ch = <change to HP>. HP is half or 
continuous pedal on Channel 3, with Left Hand on Channel 1 and Right 
Hand on Channel 2. Obviously, GM files out there in the wild do not 
abide by this DKV model, and thus the on/off (0/127) thumping!!!

A great filter utility would be to take out MIDI Controller 64 data 
from existing Piano Channel and move it to Channel 3. Anyone game or 
is this already avail? Manually this can be done with sequencing 
software.

Fred Kagel, Dir.
Freehold Computer Training Ctr.
www.freeholdcomputer.com


Walter Sharpe wrote:
> I bought a new Disklavier MX500 upright with the DKC50R controller 
[snip]
Here are the problems:
> 1. Pedal thump
> 2. Solenoid clicks
> 3. Double strike
> Now the details on my problems by the number:
> 1. I learned that the sustain pedal on most Disklaviers is either 
all the way up or all the way down and that it moves fast and hard. 
It can't properly interpret half pedal or gentle pedal movement 
information like I find in the Piano e-Competiton midi files. You 
need one of the very expensive Pro models for gentle or half pedal 
movement. On mine (an ordinary consumer model Disklavier), the 
sustain pedal moves with a thump that can be heard all the way on the 
other side of the house. The noise is fairly easy to ignore most of 
the time because of the sound of a lot of notes playing at once but 
during quiet passages, the pedal thumping is very noticeable. At 
times when the pedal goes down while several notes are being held it 
sets all the strings to vibrating. I can only describe the noise that 
makes as a "low roar". I guess it is the closest thing to "white 
noise" that a piano can make.




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Todd's family web site was completely updated 012/22/03.  It contains some fun disklavier content and links to midi sites among many other things, The url is:
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Greetings Walter and Group,

I am writing utility programs to modify MIDI files. Is there some
agreement regarding what needs to be done to eliminate duplicate track
data etc for problems like pedal thumping? Is this an issolated
problem or do certain MIDI file conventions (I really don't understand
the need for duplicate pedal information to be in files to begin
with.) produce files that cause problems and is there a need for
utilities to remove or shift these events?

Most of the functions in my utilities are for electronic piano rolls
but I am hoping to add functions for use by DKV owners. What sorts of
functions are needed. I can easily add functions like merging tracks.
I already can do this and can fix resulting overlaps but have not
attempted to remove redundant events. This is probably not difficult
to do but is it necessary? Does the DKV care if events are duplicated?

 



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Best regards,
Spencer Chase        mailto:spencer@...
67550 Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville,  CA 95542    Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454    UPS only.
Spencer@...
http://www.spencerserolls.com
http://www.spencerserolls.com/MidiValve.htm
(707) 984-8356

Walt,

Starting with the source, the 12th St Rag Midi file is strictly 
on/off (up/down) for the sustain pedal, no ands, ifs, or buts. 
Therefore, continuous (HP/Half Pedal) is a mute issue with this 
particular file.In Cakewalk, View | Events and observe Controller 64 
(the sustain pedal) as 127 or 0 --- right down thump alley. In 
Cakewalk or other sequencing program, you can lower the upper values. 
You did not delete all of the pedal info as you have indicated below. 
I still saw Controller 64 data.

I am not familiar with your model DKV (we have a Mark III), and not 
sure of your controller's capabilities with regard to HP data. What 
happens if you record something and observe the Controller values in 
Cakewalk? Are they not in a variable range? How does the thumping 
sound? 

AFAIK, you can redirect only one MIDI channel to the DSK itself 
through the Mark III controller functions, so what you are doing with 
the midi file is just fine. I was referring to a file that already 
had Piano on Channel 1 and 2 and pedal on 3.

Fred


--- In disklavier@yahoogroups.com, Walter Sharpe <wlsharpe@y...> 
wrote:
> Fred,
> Thank you for asking. No, I did not get resolution to the pedal 
thumping. My tech has been trying to resolve it but he is very busy 
and hard to get to come out to work on it. He said that my model does 
not do half pedal like the much more expensive Pro models do. It's 
either all the way down or all the way up. However, he asked me to 
give him some sample midi segments where it is particularly 
noticeable on a floppy disk so he could take it back to the store and 
try it on some other pianos. Sure enough, he reported that while the 
other pianos like my model thump softly if you listen for it, they 
are not as loud as mine. He adjusted it as best as he can and said he 
would check with Yamaha for more ideas. This has been going on for 2 
years now, not just with the tump but also the solenoid clicks and 
double strike. I think the plan is to try a number of things to solve 
the problems, one at a time, progressing from the simple and 
inexpensive to the more complex and costly. This is a good
>  strategy but when it takes 6 months to go from one step to the 
next, that's a bit much. Like I said, he's very busy, backed up with 
work and I want to be patient with him, I was hoping someone in the 
group would have some ideas. Apparently, it's the first time my tech 
has encountered these problems and he's going through the learning 
curve. I was hoping I could help him accelerate the curve. I am 
fairly handy with mechanical and electronic things but have resisted 
getting my own hands on the works because I don't want to be blamed 
for anything going wrong while it is still being resolved under the 
warranty. One of the first things I would do would be to try putting 
felt on thumping pedal parts but when I suggested that to my tech, he 
was hesitant to do anything except step-by-step under explicit 
instructions from Yamaha. I would have no problem with that if it 
weren't for the fact that it's 6 months between visits.
>  
> I am a little puzzled by what you wrote: "...Function | Piano Part 
| Rcv Ch = <change to HP>. HP ..." and the discussion of channel 2 
and 3. With my Disklavier, whatever is on channel 1 goes to the 
piano, all other channels go to my stereo system which is plugged 
into the large phone jack on the back of the piano. When I get a midi 
that has one hand on channel 1 and another hand on channel 2, like a 
lot of stuff on perfessorbill.com I have to use Cakewalk to redirect 
tracks 2 and 3 to channel 1. Otherwise, I hear part of it coming from 
my stereo and part of it coming from the Yamaha acoustic piano. Do 
you mean I could have just gone into the setup menu of my controller 
and told it to send midi data on channels 2 and 3 to the acoustic 
piano instead of the speakers? What I had to do with Bill Edwards 
stuff (www.perfessorbill.com) to get it to play correctly was merge 
the 3 separate channels into one and delete the duplicate and 
triplicate pedal instructions and then reduce the
>  velocity. (I could have also left all 3 tracks and just reassigned 
track 2 and 3 to channel 1 and deleted all pedal information from 2 
of the three tracks)  Attached is a zip file with his original and my 
copy of his 12th Street Rag after I had to modify it to play 
correctly on my piano. You will see what I mean if you compare the 
files with Cakewalk or some other program that lets you get into it.
> -Walt
> 
> fkagel <fkagel@f...> wrote:
> Walter,
> 
> Did you every get any resolution to your pedal thumping? Was it a 
> mechanical adjustment that a you, the user, could do or will a 
> technical pro be needed?
> 
> I assume the original MIDI e-competition files support the 
following, 
> but don't know if your particular controller supports the same: 
> Function | Piano Part | Rcv Ch = <change to HP>. HP is half or 
> continuous pedal on Channel 3, with Left Hand on Channel 1 and 
Right 
> Hand on Channel 2. Obviously, GM files out there in the wild do not 
> abide by this DKV model, and thus the on/off (0/127) thumping!!!
> 
> A great filter utility would be to take out MIDI Controller 64 data 
> from existing Piano Channel and move it to Channel 3. Anyone game 
or 
> is this already avail? Manually this can be done with sequencing 
> software.
> 
> Fred Kagel, Dir.
> Freehold Computer Training Ctr.
> www.freeholdcomputer.com
> 
> 
> Walter Sharpe wrote:
> > I bought a new Disklavier MX500 upright with the DKC50R 
controller 
> [snip]
> Here are the problems:
> > 1. Pedal thump
> > 2. Solenoid clicks
> > 3. Double strike
> > Now the details on my problems by the number:
> > 1. I learned that the sustain pedal on most Disklaviers is either 
> all the way up or all the way down and that it moves fast and hard. 
> It can't properly interpret half pedal or gentle pedal movement 
> information like I find in the Piano e-Competiton midi files. You 
> need one of the very expensive Pro models for gentle or half pedal 
> movement. On mine (an ordinary consumer model Disklavier), the 
> sustain pedal moves with a thump that can be heard all the way on 
the 
> other side of the house. The noise is fairly easy to ignore most of 
> the time because of the sound of a lot of notes playing at once but 
> during quiet passages, the pedal thumping is very noticeable. At 
> times when the pedal goes down while several notes are being held 
it 
> sets all the strings to vibrating. I can only describe the noise 
that 
> makes as a "low roar". I guess it is the closest thing to "white 
> noise" that a piano can make.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To Post a message to the group, send it to:   disklavier@Y...
> 
> To Post a private message to Todd Muncy, the group's founder and 
moderator, send it to:
> disklavier-owner@Y...
> 
> To reach our group's web site go to:
> http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier
> 
> Todd's family web site was completely updated 012/22/03.  It 
contains some fun disklavier content and links to midi sites among 
many other things, The url is:
> http://MuncyFamily.com 
> 
> THINKING OF LEAVING THE GROUP?
> If you are thinking of unsubcribing because you are getting too 
much mail, go the the web site and change your email delivery option 
instead.  That will fix the problem, while maintaining your access to 
the group.  If you insist on leaving us completely send a blank email 
to:
> disklavier-unsubscribe@y... 
> 
> Know someone who wants to join?  Have them send a blank email to:
> disklavier-subscribe@e... or give them this link:
> http://Yahoogroups.com/group/disklavier/join 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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>   
>    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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