All sorts of new experiences this week. Normally, I don't like puzzlers much, because I trouble shoot with a sort of elimination decision tree, rather than a list of possibilities to check, and I need to have all three hands on something to understand it. This one, however, I thought was unusual enough to show you. It's an older generic console (didn't even look at the name). As I was taking the front off, I plunked on a few keys to get some idea of what I was up against, when I noticed the treble half didn't play. "Oh yea", she said, "The kids have been having trouble up there." So why don't they tell you these things when they schedule the appointment? The bass half worked fine, but from mid treble up, there was progressively more and more lost motion until the hammers wouldn't move at all in the last octave and a half. Keys, keybed, or action specific? Running a finger across the top of the hammer moldings and again across the backchecks indicated that the flanges were intact and the screws were holding them in place on the rail. I lifted wippens by hand and got the same effect as with the keys. Ding! Diagnostics complete, in about half a minute. Having decided what I was looking for, I pulled the action and found what logically had to be the only possible reason for the symptoms, though this is the first time I've seen it... in a vertical. I'm off to the shop now to fix it. Name "it". Ron N
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