S&S green goop

[Brian Trout]

Hi Ken,

I hope I'm way off base, for the sake of the sanity of those involved, but
does this piano have a vertigree(sp?) problem?  Some of those Steinways
could become quite miserable with that stuff.

I wouldn't wish it on my competition!  ;-)

Brian Trout
Quarryville, Pa.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Jankura <kenrpt@mail.cvn.net>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Thursday, June 17, 1999 11:41 PM
Subject: S&S green goop


>List,
>Have any of you noticed the correlation between difficulty of rep spring
>regulation and amount of green goop in the rep spring lever slot on
>Steinway actions? I've been regulating an L, using a technique taught by
>the great John Hartman, whereby you use a small 1 gram (or so) weight which
>you clip to the strike point of the hammer. When you set each hammer to
>'just barely rise' from check, you get consistent spring tension, and a
>very even 'speed of rise' difference from bass to treble. It has worked
>well for me the few other times I have tried it, but on this one, despite
>my best efforts, they end up working a little inconsistently. Is it the
>green goop? This piano seems to have quite a bit of it. I know that it is a
>special secret formula mixture of moose earwax and equatorial pond algae
>designed especially to aid in repetition, but I was also wondering whether
>anyone makes it a routine part of regulation to clean this out, and replace
>it with graphite, Protek MPL, VJ lube, Chapstick, etc. I know it would only
>help to replace it, but exactly how does one do this quickly and
>efficiently? It's not in this piano's budget to disassemble to clean, or is
>there an easier way?
>
>Ken Jankura
>Newburg,PA
>
>
>