Hi to all Of the Artists benches we have the best are available from Jannsen and have a new kind of mechanism which is kind of scissors like and works well without noise for a long time. They also sell replacement sleeves for the ends of the bars that slide back and forth in the guide grooves when the bench is adjusted up and down. We have a whole pile of worn out artist benches and they all have the old kind of machine with a big shaft running all the way through and a couple levers that move the seat up and down. They are worthless on stage but we use them in studios. I was down at the Kimball factory once on a guild tour and they wanted to show us the new hydraulic artist bench they had. I sat down and rocked back and forth and the thing squeaked like mad. I was not impressed. ================================================================= Steinway plate braces can be removed as long as you can remove them by hand without any effort. If they are stuck tight they will not go back in and it is best to leave those in place. I say that and yet we had some group come in and take the brace out of the D in the Auditorium so they could put in some kind of sound pickup device. When they were done the thing would not go back in so the stage hands ground the ends of the brace down enough to replace it. I don't know when this happened. I found out about it when I restrung the thing and took the bar out for easier access to dampers and strings. Any pressure on the bar now is taken by the screws. It does not seem to have any affect. ================================================================= Now and then I come across Steinways that do not have the little metal wedge that goes between the horn and the crossblock. This thing falls out when you let the tension off for re-stringing. I don't know how they could come out by themselves but maybe they do. I once forgot to put one in before I chipped. I could not even drive it in with a hammer. I let the tension back down and put it in place and held it with tape and started over. Now and then I find pianos that have that metal wedge missing and also have new pin blocks that are fit very poorly. They tune awful. ================================================================= The Baldwin company had me wedge a pin block on an Howard C171. This repair involves driving thin wooden wedges into the gap between the block and the plate flange. It worked fine. I was amazed at the difference in the way the piano tuned after wedging the block. I have used this repair on several other pianos with badly fit pin blocks with good success. Any comments? ================================================================= Question was: Is there anyone out there who has substantial experience with broken plates.......? -- A few years ago I attended a class about plates given by the man from APSCO. I don't recall his name. The class covered everything about plates from drawings to patterns to casting to repairs. Of the repairs he talked about, the one you want is called "cold welding" I think. As you know this repair is tricky. While it may be possible to make the repair, you will not know if it was good until you are able to tune it. That is to say by the time you remove the plate and fix it and put it back in and string it and chip it up to pitch, it either works or breaks again. One of the repairs I learned about in this class which I use from time to time involves fixing a hole in the casting where a string must cross. This could be the capo bar or on uprights around the V bar. You drill out the hole to the size of a nail and drive the nail into the hole and peen it down and smooth as needed with a file. It works. ================================================================= Phil Sloffer Indiana University School of Music psloffer@ucs.indiana.edu Bloomington IN =================================================================
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC