[CAUT] Teflon Bushings

[Ron Nossaman]

Back in the late 70s, when I was just getting started with pianos and 
working in someone else's shop, we ordered a set of shanks and flanges 
with pre-hung hammers from the Mother Ship, as a presumed expedience. 
The hammer hanging was reasonably well done, but the Teflon center 
pinning was abysmal. The HMWIC's take was, "If they supply them clicking 
like that, that must be how they want them to be". Add to that, 
Steinway's attitude that any Teflon action center pinning problem was 
the fault of the incompetent local tech, since they left the factory 
"perfect", and either the unavailability, or high price (I forget which 
at the time) of appropriate tools for correcting the perfect factory 
pinning complicated the process somewhat, I decided then and there that 
I wanted nothing more to do with the damned things - ever. After a 
series of periodic reevaluations through the years, I've retained that 
initial assessment. For me, it's in the same category as Pure Sound 
wire. It may be fine, within defined parameters and impositions, but 
requiring the rest of the world to invest in tools and/or materials 
necessary to keep the systems shored up and working is expecting a lot 
when more conventional systems can be made to work at least as well. 
This is, more or less, how the current systems came to become 
conventional. Now, I'm all for trashing entrenched dogma when something 
that works better for the effort, or as well for less effort comes 
along, but I fail to see how Teflon bushings have ever met that criteria.

Maybe I'm just not squinting at it just right.
Ron N