Distorted Piano on Older Albums

I think it is widely accepted that faithful reproduction of the piano presented a major difficulty for sound engineers in the fifties and sixties. There are those who saythatnot evn Van Gelder recorded piano well.

Certainly, that boxy, recessed sound is inherent in many recordings of that period.

But is this what you mean by distortion?

My understanding is that distortion caused by mistracking and groove wear does not affect all elements of a recording equally, and that with jazz it affects the timbre of trumpets and pianos more than other instruments. This is apparently due to the exceptionally fast attack of these instruments which simultaneously have a very strong midrange presence.

rich and i actually have the same ideas, here. if the piano is distorted in any way, there would be a measurable effect on other instruments. it just might be tough to notice. piano is so full of overtones that it easily gets distorted.

however, the louder the playing, the more easily distortion also sets in, and so that's why horns in old movie scores sound very "out of tune": either the tape has stretched or warped due to improper storage, or the equipment is not tracking very well.

GST: care to post a rip for us to discuss?

Hi All, I had noticed this thread from some time back.  I had actually had this very problem of distorted piano on a recently acquired vintage copy of Bill Evans Portrait in Jazz.  I actually acquired it for very cheap and was thrilled initially when it sounded quiet, spacious, but very clean tone.  It's a large black mic&reel, with Inc. but looks solid NM.  But then in the louder passages there was that distorted piano...pretty bad actually. I tried to ignore it and told myself that it only occurs in 5-6 places on side 1 and hardly at all on side 2, but actually I found it kind of ruined the listening experience.  It's such a great record and some of the best moments are in those loud, rich voicings he hits. I cleaned it repeatedly (don't have a record machine, but use disc doctor pads), but it didn't help at all. It was like this for essentially half a year....I would put it on occasionally and there would be that piano distortion again.  It was a real shame because everything else sounded so wonderful.

Then, today I put it back on, and all of a sudden that piano distortion was gone!!  What happened?? I said to myself. At first I thought, "well, maybe just playing it knocked gunk out of the grooves", but then I remembered that I had cleaned my stylus (for the first time ever, ahem. ok, so now I'm admitting that I'm fairly new to this) a few weeks ago.  I figure this must be the reason, basically that the stylus was dirty and residue on the stylus tip caused mistracking or something. Wow, am I relieved and feeling great about this.  So, I wonder if something similar could have been going on with your system?  Who knows, I'm sure there are lots of reasons that distortion can appear.  I had figured that it was a pressing defect, but now I'm feeling pretty damn good about keeping my stylus clean.

Hope this is helpful.

Hey. I'm having a similar problem with my Herbie Hancock 'My Point of View' record. The record has been VPI cleaned (twice, for good measure) and it made no difference to the fuzziness in the piano playing. It's a strong VG+ that plays superbly otherwise, and the fuzziness occurs in the "intermittent louder bursts", as described by Rich, which suggests groove wear.

However, since you've had some success with cleaning your stylus, I'm going to give that a go. May I ask how you cleaned it? Apart from brushing, I've never cleaned a stylus in my 18 years of collecting records; I've never owned a high-end one so I would always just replace them every couple of years...