RE: Buckling under Steinway Back Rail Cloth RE: Humidity Dear List, Has anyone had this problem? Several of our new Steinway Bs have a strip of material under the Back Rail Cloth that builds up the Back Rail a small amount. It's done as a fine adjustment in the factory. Like the cloth, this strip of material is glued only at the front edge. I have seen black and brown strips--the brown is thinner. I called it fibreboard, but Steinway calls is phenolic resin paper. We apparently had high humidity in a couple of studios that caused this paper to buckle in several spots. This raised the backs of a number of keys, and of course affected key level and hammer line. My solution was to glue the strip down solid--not just at the front edge (gluing down buckled material was more difficult than I thought it would be!). The word from Steinway is that they have never heard of this happening before. Has anyone out there experienced this problem? For the most part, our humidity swings between 35% and 65% RH, but has on occasion gone just under 30% and just above 70%. Do your schools do better than this? Thanks for any input. John Baird Millikin University
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