At 11:41 AM 2/15/98 EST, you wrote: >Karen; > One cause of this might be that the player was using the soft pedal while >holding down the sustain pedal thereby allowing an abrupt application of the >soft pedal to "throw" the hammers against the strings due to the lack of >spring resistance against the hammer butts. (is that sentence long enough? >:-) >Jim Bryant (FL) > Hi, Karen I think what Jim says here is probably what is happening, and that your most realistic option is to educate the pianist. Perhaps if you told her that, since it is the "soft" pedal, she has to press it softly for it to work? If she thinks a little too sharply for that rather preposterous statement to wash, you could explain that if she holds the right pedal down, the hammers will fly up too easily when she stamps on the left pedal. Is she, by any chance, someone who uses the pedals as a percussion section? Or someone who pushes the right pedal down at the beginning of the selection, and raises it at the end? In that case, knowing that the soft pedal won't work okay if the other one was down might improve her playing style. If you increased the friction of the soft pedal linkage (firm bushing in the hole where the dowel comes through the keybed?) might it slow her down enough? Probably a bad idea ... might jam. Maybe installing a coil spring between the hammer rail and the action bracket so the rail couldn't fly forward? Rather bizarre, and hard to anchor ... You could install a larger stop block (of scrap hammer felt) between the hammer rail and the action bracket. That might make it harder for her to fling the hammers. Good luck! I hope she isn't someone who takes offense easily. Susan Susan Kline P.O. Box 1651 Philomath, OR 97370 skline@proaxis.com "You can say goodbye to the past, but you can never wipe it out." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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