The mechanics of a grand action are brilliant, a series of levers that reaches inside the piano while converting finger force into a hammer force that can play strings with musical expression. Such a feat has many complicated details, but observed individually, they are logical, pragmatic – mechanical. Geometry is the design engine for this collaboration. And its leverages both transfer these forces and transform the distances they travel. Each finger’s mechanical advantage (2 kilograms to play a 10-or-less gram hammer) is divided by 5 in a tradeoff multiplying finger travel distance by 5 into a hammer travel distance that accomplishes fff. Or ppp.
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