Uplifting Experienced

[Bill Ballard]

I recently reinstalled the dampers and damper assembly (fresh felt all
around) on a Steinway O which I had restrung with a pinblock. I was
surprised to find that the damper tray was slightly sprung upwards. That's
to say that the tray did not drop down by its own weight but was lifted by
some unknown force up through the first 20% of its travel. (The tray
return spring is the coil spring over on the bass end, not the leaf spring
on the treble end, but this shouldn't make any difference.) The only thing
that I can imagine is that the combined total strength of the individual
underlever springs is slightly higher than that of the tray return spring.

I did not strengthen these springs, although I checked across the set of
them for weak ones. In general the strongest were ~30g (measured with the
P.K.Neuse leaf spring gage 50-0-50g), though the bass ones were noticeably
weaker than the middle section (presumably because the leading in the
levers takes over the job of returning the levers).

Has anybody seen this before. I haven't. I've taken a week off for tuning
and will bet back to the fine damper reg next week.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter

"Never try to teach a pig to sing.
It wastes timeand  annoys the pig."
  Sign on the wall of
     a college voice teacher's studio.