Hi Keith This is easy enough to contrive yourself. It should be mentioned tho that the ratio measured is not the same ratio as the Stanwood ratio... nearly every instrument will end up yeilding two reasonbly significant different results when both ratio measurements are the same. And tho I have yet to check it... I dont think either of them are the same ratio as the Overs method.. which is more akin to what designers operate with. Important destinctions if one is thinking about using the distance ratio that Dales kit addresses for setting up a Stanwood like action balance. The resultant BW will almost always be a couple grams off. Cheers RicB If you had one of Dale Erwins Action Ratio Kits you could measure the action ratio without having to worry about friction as a component. Basically it depresses a key 6mm for you and there is a mm measuring tool to measure the hammer rise. Then you read the ratio from the side of the tool. I just replaced the hammers on a 6'2 Grotrian and it had 5 leads in the bass just like the situation you describe. Grotrian moves the stack to find strike point and that put the capstans on the the back of the wippen heel, beyond the red underfelt in the center of the heel. The action ratio measured 1 to 6.3. I determined that moving the capstan to the front of the heel changed the action ratio to 1 to 4.8. When I put it slightly forward of center, the ratio was 1 to 5.5. I now have three leads max in the bass. The keys themselves have a lot of mass so now this piano plays like dream. On the S&S, Moving the knuckle is the usual case but Steinway does move the stack on the key frame to find the strike point. Tokiwa is making really nice parts and has 17 mm knuckle placement shanks and whips that match. In Dale's shop I just did a Renner back action for a B and then a Tokiwa back action for somethindg. They were done almost side by side and I had less traveling and alignment to do with the Tokiwa parts. I was much happier with the wippens too. Keith Roberts
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC