10/03/2023
Here’s a copy of the article that I had published within the Piano Technicians Guild Journal in June. (I’ll attach the pics that were originally within the document right after the text portion.)
Witnessing a Revolution in the Vertical Action
By Mark Larin
The title of this article describes the thoughts and feelings I experienced when I visited the trail-blazing work environment of Oliver Esmonde-White. I was invited to spend the day with Oliver and his team in downtown Montreal and was taken aback by the sense that the next big wave in the piano industry was revealed to me during this visit.
I had expected to find high-end workmanship and tooling at Oliver’s shop because I knew that he was an early adopter of the Grandwork™ Full Regulation System and of the Fandrich-Rhodes Weight Bench™ Touchweight System. I knew him as one of the highly-trained Yamaha technicians, and that he had received training in Japan accordingly. I knew that he had been the first person to purchase the one-person Klavier Roller® grand piano tilter/moving/stair-climbing machine in North America. I knew that he had a passion for the late Darrell Fandrich’s vertical piano action model.
When I arrived at the large Montreal building with underground parking, Oliver met me and we went up to the floor where his shop is located. Along the way, he informed me that the Quebec government had set aside five floors of this huge building to house some of the most innovative businesses in arts and culture within the province, supporting a hub where creativity could flourish. I met several of these diverse specialists along the way to his shop.
The ten rooms, of various sizes, that comprised his shop had been designed through consultation with industrial engineers and an architect. Aside from the recording booth, the presentation space that could accommodate several grand pianos and comfortably seat thirty people, the huge main workshop and several speciality areas, the series of 3-D printers, the CNC machine, and loads of wheeled tool cabinets, I was met with introductions to members of his team. Amongst the ten full-time staff and ten or so part-time staff, I was surprised to meet not only hands-on technicians but several staff that were specifically hired for Research and Development! This, I thought, was not going to be just a standard visit to a high-end rebuilder’s shop – and I was right. The team has various innovations under way, and after seeing each of them I was compelled to ask Oliver to contact me when they were ready for market.
Of particular focus by the team at this time was the work that Oliver has led in furthering the late Darrell Fandrich’s vertical action mechanism. Some years ago, Darrell created a vertical action that would readily surpass the vertical actions that we have come to know over the past century. It could repeat at speeds similar to a grand action! The model, as good as it was, did not lend itself well to field technician work, so its progress was halted. Oliver has been given the rights, permission, and blessing from Darrell’s wife, Heather, to further the development of the model. Oliver and his engineering team have created adaptations to the Fandrich model which have simplified and improved the design such that it is now ready for market. They all walked me through the modifications and improvements that they have made and I found the system’s adjustments to be both easily understood and easy to regulate. They have reduced the previous wire-bending tasks to now being two ‘turn of a screw’ tasks – each of which can be done with the same $3 tool.
Some of the major changes that Darrell introduced were eliminating the bridal straps and bridal wire, replacing the upright jack tender with a grand action’s leather knuckle, adding a torsion spring that simultaneously pushes the jack to the reset position while putting continual forward pressure on the hammer butt, and utilizing a strong hammer return spring. Oliver’s team fashioned a sleeve that could fit along the butt catcher’s shank which is moveable. It captures one end of a torsion spring. Sliding the sleeve along this small shank allows for adjustments to the spring’s tension. These parts have been created using 3-D printing and subsequently will be made for mass production through injection moulding processes.
The 3-D printed vertical parts exhibit features which allow the action to perform similar to a high-efficiency grand action.
Oliver’s team focused on making an action unit that was robust, relatively quick and easy to install, one that could be readily mass produced, and user-friendly to technicians. He introduced the process of replacing the hammer return spring rail with another rail. On this specialized rail, one slides individual or modular plastic blocks with each one containing a hammer butt return spring. Once the 88 blocks are installed on the rail and positioned directly in front of each hammer butt, the technician places a weight on the key that reflects the desired downweight of that key and then turns the screw that is embedded into that modular block until the key weight begins to change. Yes, it’s that simple.
The new action design contains a specialized rail that allows the technician to adjust the downweight of each key assembly.
The second element to adjust is that of the forward force placed upon the hammer butt/head assembly by this torsion spring. This, too, is adjusted by a screw that is set within the newly-modified hammer butt assembly (where one end of that torsion screw sits). Adjustment will remind technicians of setting the hammer rise on grand pianos as the hammer tail releases from the backcheck. Once again, this process is quite easy to accomplish and makes use of the $3 tool.
Soft-pedal playing is greatly improved without increasing lost motion, as our left-pedal mechanism on a typical vertical piano will do. The insertion of a rail, beneath and toward the back end of the keys, allows for the entire key’s mechanism to rise as a unit toward the string and to preserve the interrelationship between all relevant parts in the process. This contributes to the great control that, with other modifications, results in a very articulated ability to play pianissimo. An easy-to-install pedal mechanism, which attaches to the left pedal to actualize these features, is included in the kit.
Even prior to Oliver’s technician-friendly and consistency-promoting changes, the Fandrich action model was independently analysed in a thesis from the University Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. They found this action could offer the player an increase in the rate of repetition in the range of 2 - 3.5 times faster than a regular vertical action. With regards to tone, they found that one could reliably get 7 different volume levels out of a regular action, 21 with a grand, and 23 with the Fandrich model.
The effect of the changes has been repeatedly assessed by many professional musicians who have attested to the gains achieved from their experiences with this action. One rated the improvements, when compared to a regular vertical action, as moving up the scale from a 3/10 to a 10/10 (with a 10 being his rating for a grand action’s abilities).
The action is now dubbed the Esmonde-Fandrich action due to the great contribution made by both developers and in honor of the great work of the late Darrell Fandrich. Oliver and his team are now putting together the instruction packet that will be sent out with the kit for technicians to use. The current time for modifying a piano with this system is about 25 hours and the costs for the kit are estimated to be under $2000.
Action model of the new Esmonde-Fandrich action.
Oliver was a recent guest on Piano Tech Radio Hour, hosted by Eathan Janney, and I would encourage you to visit that website for a good presentation of this creation. The title of the interview is “Bearing Witness to a Revolution.” Not since the days when square grand pianos were on the market have we seen a three-tiered acoustic piano field. As this now-practical adaptation bursts onto the scene, we will likely revisit the days of a three-horse race in the field featuring vertical pianos, Esmonde-Fandrich verticals, and grand pianos. The first piano manufacturer to take hold of this invention is Pleyel of France. The new ownership of the long-famous piano brand recently signed an exclusive three-year contract to install them in their new pianos! (The revolution has begun.) Oliver maintains the ability to sell conversion kits to technicians and to vastly increase the potential that rests with the thousands of vertical pianos in our care.
As I was leaving and saying goodbye to Oliver, one of Canada’s top technicians phoned him. I asked to speak with him and told him that he needs to get himself down to see what was happening in this shop ASAP! I noted that few changes like this have ever occurred in our industry over the past century. Likewise, I encourage the reader to find out more about this new action and to contact Oliver for further information or, as I did, to arrange for a tour of one of the most innovative shops in our trade. You will be happy that you did!
