[CAUT] Friday puzzler: Won't play on hard blow

[Susan Kline]

Okay, Alan

A long shot --- is something wedged under the adjusting button for the 
rep lever, back in the back of the wippen? So that the rep lever is 
forced too low in front to support the knuckle? I had that once -- note 
would play sort of out of habit on moderate blows, bouncing back onto 
the jack top on return, till a hard blow would get the jack in front of 
the knuckle, pressed against it. The hammer at that point was lower than 
rest position, what a dismal sight. Jouncing around the key a few times 
would eventually free the jack. It had me going till I saw a great big 
fat oversized paper clip lodged under the button.

But two in the same piano?

In a way, it was like having a seized rep lever center pin, so that the 
lever is stuck too low, and the jack "sticks its tongue out."

Well, I suppose that means my guess is "seized rep lever center pins." 
The old fragmenting center pin plating (Asian flu) problem. If that's 
what it is, and you have two, you will have more later on, till you 
repin every sucker one of them.

Susan Kline

On 10/29/2010 2:47 PM, reggaepass at aol.com wrote:
> This is more fun than I thought it would be.  I've posted this puzzler 
> on both lists and the two groups are at about the same point (if you 
> remove Ed Sutton's formidable contributions from the mix, anyway).  To 
> review for one and all, the instrument in question is a mainstream 
> grand piano of relatively recent vintage.  The answer is neither of 
> the first two things that came to the minds of so many of us, cheating 
> jack and too-close back check (sounds like a country music duo, don't 
> it?).  Nor is it a broken keystick or any of Ed Sutton's deeper 
> speculations (on the CAUT list) about flexing balance rails and broken 
> keybeds (man, Ed, you have seen some pretty interesting stuff!). 
>  Also, it is not Catastrophic Action Failure--remember, it is not a 
> repeated note thing--or a foreign object.
>
> Time for more information:  There are two problem notes, one in the 
> bass and one in the lower treble.  The worse one is in the bass, 
> probably because of the greater mass of the hammer (compared to the 
> other one).  When these notes won't play on a hard blow, one of their 
> neighboring hammers moves slightly.
>
> Going kayaking--back later,
>
> Alan E.

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