Second recording (Blumlein)

HERE. Same piece as in the first recording, but this time with Var. I as well. I changed the stereo mic technique to Blumlein, and it does sound better, despite the dry acoustic. Once again, I muffed the trills. I’m playing the trills with fingers 3 and 4, starting with a chord where I play D4, F#4 and D5 with fingers 1, 2 and 3 respectively. This is because 4 and 5 are too weak to trill fast enough. Bah!

Appreciating the Omega’s damper pedal action

One of the things that I had doubts about was the very short travel in the Omega’s damper pedal. If you’ve ever played on the Omega you will know what I mean. It of course has the usual two-stage action:

1. Initial travel with no damper movement. This allows you to (a) rest your foot on the pedal and keep it ready for instant use; and (b) operate the dampers without allowing the pedal to make clunking noises when it is fully released.
2. Commencement of damper lift, from a lot of damping to no damping at all.

The initial travel is about 8mm (measured at the tip of the pedal), at which point the pedal comes up against a very distinct change in resistance when the mechanism engages the dampers (but does not lift them). Subsequently, from full damping to no damping there is about another 5mm of travel.

The very short action is disconcerting at first, particularly if your pedaling technique is sufficiently advanced that you do partial pedaling. It took a while, but I finally got used to it, and now I understand why the travel is so short. I am now able to much more easily do things like half-pedaling very quickly between legato chords to thin the texture between chords, but with enough sustain to give my fingers enough time to reach the next chord.

It’s quite amazing — I think ‘want sustain’, and a little bit of extra downward pressure of the right foot gives it to me, even though I don’t feel as if the pedal has moved at all. Then I think ‘clear some texture but retain some sustain’, and my right foot eases of the pressure a tad just before the next chord is played and then reapplies pressure with the chord. Again I don’t feel as if the pedal has moved. It just feels like a rapid wiggle of the right foot with seemingly no movement, but with the desired result. Of course the sensation of no movement is due to the fact that I am concentrating on what’s happening on the keyboard and therefore am not consciously aware of what the foot is doing. But it’s uncanny nonetheless.

The first regulation check and tuning

Last Friday Alvin spent a day at my home to regulate and tune the Omega. On the regulation side there wasn’t much to do other than to check that the action was still within spec. A couple of notes were a little twangy, and they still are but less so. We will wait a while more before addressing them. It is either due to strings not being level, or hammers needing a bit of sanding.

As for the tuning, Alvin gave me the ’secret’ Sauter temperament, which I suspect is Almost Equal. My tinnitus-afflicted ears tells me that the higher octaves need a bit more stretch.

Alvin hard at work

Alvin arrived at 1100h and left around 1900h. He worked right through, not stopping for lunch or to take a drink break! He then had to dash off for a dinner appointment with a visiting pianist from the U.S

While the cheek blocks were out I took the opportunity to snap a couple of pictures of the left-hand one, from the top and from the side facing the keys.

Left cheek block -- top

Left cheek block -- side

The black inlays and engraved steel plates are custom work done at my request (and for a price). The right-hand cheek block has the Omega’s serial number on a steel inlay on the side facing the keys. I do have another set of spare cheek blocks in plain bubinga veneer. These will go into the piano should I ever sell it.

Soft pedal — 2 or 2.5 strings?

I am tempted to get Alvin to change the soft pedal to hit 2 strings (of 3-string unisons) instead of the factory default of 2.5 strings. (The 0.5 means that the third string is given a sort of glancing blow by the edge of the hammer). Since it is easy to play ppp on the Omega I thought that it would be nice if the soft pedal can be used to effect timbral changes that are more obvious.

Ulrich Sauter prefers a 2-string soft pedal. He calls it the ‘mountain moonshine’ timbre. This will actually work very well with a lot of the stuff that I am playing now. Hmmm….

The Omega opens up

I have a confession to make. Last Tuesday 12th August I could no longer bear playing on the Omega with it out of tune. So rather than wait for the first tuning to be done by Alvin on 23rd August (this coming Friday), I broke my promise and tuned the piano myself. I used Verituner Pocket to get Bill Bremmer’s EBVT temperament, with Ron Koval’s ‘One for All’ stretch style. Of course, Alvin will be allowed to tune it using his secret Sauter temperament when he comes this Friday.

It’s been interesting listening to the voice of the Omega change since it was delivered on 8th August. It was initially a little too rounded, and there was very little difference in tone between soft pedal down and up. However, as the hammer contact points have hardened the tone has opened up somewhat. So the voice has gone from being very good, to even better now. The difference between soft pedal down and up is also more pronounced.

The Omega’s extra register

The Sauter Omega includes an extra register in the form of coloured lines on the soundboard. These lines indicate where to touch the strings to get the first, second and third order harmonics. If you touch a string at the point of the lines and press the key or pluck the string, you hear the correspondent harmonics and partials.

• The first order harmonic is available across the keyboard, from A0 to C8, indicated by the black line furthest from the dampers.
• The second order harmonic from A0 to G2, and from D3 to A4, indicated by the red line. The gap from G#2 to C#3 is due to the fact that these strings cross under the bass strings and are therefore not accessible.
• The third order harmonic from A0 to G2, indicated by the blue line closest to the dampers in the bass notes.

Sauter Omega extra register lines

The damper of every white key is etched with a white bar. The picture below from the Sauter web site shows the extra register lines more clearly.

Sauter Omega extra register lines

I doubt that I (and probably 99% of pianists) would ever use the extra register, but it is interesting nonetheless that Sauter made the Omega for prepared piano compositions. It seems that grand pianos around the 7-ft size are ideal for prepared piano. Full-sized concert grands are too long for the pianist to reach the harmonic points while standing at the keyboard.

Here is the track “I’m Broken” from the album Bitter and the Sweet, by the Cécile Verny Quartet. It demonstrates the use of the Omega’s extra register.

Sauter’s one-handed music desk mechanism

I’ve always wondered why nobody has improved on the grand piano music desk’s prop-in-notch mechanism. You need two hands to adjust the music desk angle, and a careless hand can knock the prop out of its notch and send the music desk slamming down. But then, during the ‘just looking’ phase of my grand piano search I came across Sauter’s brilliant music desk mechanism that can be operated by one hand, and which can’t be accidentally knocked over. It appealed to the engineer in me, and that’s when I started to think that maybe a piano manufacturer that pays attention to details ought to be worth a closer look.

Rear of the Omega's music desk

It’s a one-way ratchet mechanism. You pull the music desk up from horizontal and let the ratchet click into one of four positions. To stow the music deck you pull it to the fully vertical position, at which point the ratchet resets and you then lower the music desk to the horizontal position. If you want to select a new position when the music desk is already up, you return it to the horizontal position and then back up to the new position.

Close-up of the Sauter music desk mechanism

The mechanism was invented by Ulrich Sauter, and has been patented.

The Omega’s hygrometer

When you order a grand piano from Sauter you can ask for a hygrometer to be fitted inside the case as an optional extra. The picture below shows the natural hair hygrometer in my Omega.

Hygrometer in Sauter Omega

To the left of frame are the remote sensor units of two digital temperature/RH meters that I have. I use two to average out the readings. Their master control units are outside the piano to measure ambient room temperature and RH. What you can’t see are the RH levels showing on the meters. The digital meters are showing 58%, while the Sauter hygrometer is showing a tad above 48%. Inscribed along the top arc of the scale is a double-headed arrow indicating that a ‘normal’ RH reading should be between 40% and 70%.

The hygrometer’s case is set very snugly into a cavity in a block of wood attached to the rim. The vents that let air into the hygrometer are three large holes in the rear of the case, so that there is almost no mixing of the air in the hygrometer and cavity with the air around the wood block. Even when the RH of the room was at 70% for a couple of hours, the Sauter hygrometer crept up to around 50% over the same period of time. At first I thought that there was something wrong with the Sauter hygrometer. But when I popped it out of the cavity it eventually showed the same RH as the digital units.

What is the Sauter hygrometer measuring? I think that it is indirectly measuring the Equivalent Moisture Content (EMC) of the wood in the piano. From Guus van den Braak’s website in Australia I got the following:

• The ideal EMC for wood within a piano is determined by most manufacturers to be 8%.
• To maintain an 8% EMC, an RH of 42% is required. [That's where that magic 42% RH comes from.]
• The safest range of RH for wood is between 40% and 60%. [Sauter says 70%.] RH swings within this range reduce the risk of destruction of the cell structure. If RH swings are beyond this range, the cell structure of wood becomes fatigued and starts to break down.
• Wood that has too high an EMC is soft and structurally weak because the cells are full of water. The acoustic properties are dampened, swelling causes stresses where it is glued together (like at the rim or by the ribs) resulting in fractured glue joints and compression ridges commonly seen in soundboards (which will split when they dry out too much).
• Too low an EMC creates the possibility of a brittle cell structure. This may be stronger than a too high an EMC, but will result in splitting or cracking if pushed too far.

So, once again, what is the Sauter hygrometer measuring? If the EMC of the wood block in which the hygrometer sits is 8%, then the air in the hygrometer’s cavity should be stable around 42% because the moisture exchange between air and wood is in equilibrium. If the hygrometer is reading more (less) than 42% then the EMC is higher (lower) than 8%. As long as the RH reading is within the safe range then all is well. Now I understand why Ulrich Sauter told me that short term swings in RH are nothing to worry about as long as on average the RH in the room is within the safe limits.

This is an ingenious and accurate way of tracking the room’s RH and it’s direct effect on the piano. All that you need to do is to calibrate the Sauter hygrometer once a year.

Reaching equilibrium?

Today is the fourth day since the Omega arrived at my home. And what Alvin has predicted will happen has indeed happened. The tuning that drifted badly over the first three days or so has stabilised. Many unisons that were previously horridly off have snapped back in line, not completely, but substantially. Only the G#3 unison is truly horrible.

BUT, although individual unisons may be back in tune, they are out of tune with the rest of the piano.

First impressions of the Omega

Despite the Omega being in its initial acclimatization period and therefore out of tune, one thing is very clear – the factory has prepped the piano to the nines. This is how it should be, but something that only the low-volume high-end manufacturers do. Other manufacturers leave it to their dealers to do a good prep before or immediately after delivery. By prepping pianos thoroughly in the factory Sauter ensures that the piano is performing at it’s best, and that the company’s reputation for quality is not dependent on somebody else over whom they have little or no control. I am not saying that no post-delivery prep work is needed, but that the chances of needing major remedial work are pretty slim. That’s assuming that the piano has been well-treated in shipping.

The Action

Action regulation feels great. Fine control of the Omega’s enormous dynamic range is easy. The importance of this cannot be overstated. That’s why so many pianists, even beginners who think that they can’t benefit from an expensive grand piano, suddenly find that the piano seems to be playing them and not the other way around.

The dynamic touch weight initially felt heavy because some things that I could do on the Kawai K-8 and the Roland A-80 keyboards I could not do on the Omega. But after experimenting for a while on Saturday I have changed my mind. I can now do some things on the Omega that I struggled with before. Here are two examples from Beethoven’s Op. 26, first movement:

• In Var II, bar 18-19, the rinforzando at the end of bar 18 should be played mf with pedal, after which the touch returns to staccato in the left-hand and dynamic level at p.

• In Var. IV, bar 26 the descending scale in the left hand has to be played with a portato touch, going from f to pp, and a little ritardando.

These were difficult to do before, but not on the Omega.

As for the heavier dynamic touch weight, well the extra hand and forearm strength will be acquired soon enough. I have already adapted enough to fix what I couldn’t play on the Omega before.

I also have to remember to not be afraid to play deep into the keys. Previously, control of pp was difficult so I tended to back off just before the end of the keystroke on soft notes. It’s like pulling a punch. Don’t need to do this on the Omega. In fact, you cannot pull your fingerstrokes on the Omega if you want a good tone.

Damper Effectiveness

On many pianos, when you play a note and release the key, there is a lot of overhang because the dampers don’t quench the vibrations in the string quickly enough, there is sympathetic resonance in other strings (even though they may be damped), and the plate rings more than it should. In the Omega, the dampers quench vibrations quickly, and what little audible overhang there is comes from the soundboard. This means that poor finger legato is very quickly revealed, as is inadequate pedal technique.

The Voice

The Omega’s voice is, in one word, glorious. It is full, rich, complex, articulate, clear, and yet creamy and rounded. The tonal palette at different loudness levels in the dynamic range from ppp to fff is beautiful. It is tonally even across the keyboard, with the tenor and treble breaks being very hard to spot.

It’s Not Loud

So many people told me that I was crazy to put a 220cm grand piano in my living room. Too loud, they said. Wrong! The Omega, with its enormous and controllable dynamic range and a keyboard that does not require you to pull your fingerstrokes to play softly, is no louder than my Kawai K-8. But when I want the Omega to roar, oh boy, roar he does!

The Eagle has landed!

Cross posted from Pianoworld, with minor edits. I will write more in the blog over time.

It’s been 11 months since I posted on Pianoworld about my decision to buy a Sauter Omega 220. Well it has finally arrived. Delivery commenced at 11am on Friday 8th August. It was a very auspicious day, with many ‘8’s:

• Date – 08.08.2008 (and first day of the Beijing Olympics)
• Serial number – contains an 8
• Price – contains 8’s
• Address of my flat – contains an 8

I hope it augers well for the future!

Annotated delivery pictures are at this link . The guest password is ‘digit’. A few quick snaps are shown below.

Pictures cannot do justice to the exquisite craftsmanship of the piano. The attention to detail, fit, finish, and hardware are nothing short of amazing. The first tuning and prep (not there is much to do other than to run through the checklist), will be in two week’s time.

Delivery has been scheduled!

The ETA for the piano mover’s truck is between 11:00h – 12:00h tomorrow.

The final countdown

Just one more ’sleep’ and my new (rather large and heavy) baby will be here. I’m waiting for Alvin to tell me what time the delivery will happen tomorrow. It will be exactly 335 days after I confirmed the Omega order with Alvin on 9th September 2007, or:

• 28,944,000 seconds
• 482,400 minutes
• 8040 hours
• 47 weeks (rounded down)

It’s hard to believe that exactly 11 months have passed in a flash, and so much water has passed under the bridge in that time.

I will be having dinner with Lynnette Seah (co-leader of the SSO) and some close family friends this coming Sunday. She wants an update on my attempt to learn to play the violin, and also wants to hear my story about starting again on the piano and buying the Omega.

Omega’s container retrieved

The container with the Omega was reached early yesterday evening. Customs will be cleared today. Alvin says that a Friday delivery is 99.9% certain. Even the weather seems to be cooperating – the forecast for Friday is for overcast skies, but no rain.

Ship is in port

And being ‘unstuffed’. Looking good for a Friday delivery. I asked to be present for the uncrating, but the freight forwarder does not allow that.

Delivery before National Day?

The ship is on schedule for arrival on 4th August. Alvin has applied for priority customs clearance, so there is good chance it will be delivered by the end of next week!

The piano movers are on standby for the morning of either 7th or 8th August.

ETA 4th August

That’s according to the freight forwarder. Will know for sure when the shipping company sends the bill of lading to Alvin. I doubt that I will see the Omega in my home before National Day. But even if I do, I absolutely refuse to learn to play any National Day songs!