Steinway strike line

[John Delacour]

At 10:56 AM -0500 12/1/01, Erwinspiano@AOL.COM wrote:

>   O.K. that being true then my experience on American Steinways at 
>least is that the designers straight line strike line doesn't work 
>all that well in many of there pianos.
>    My colleague Scott Jones a well known and like tech worked for 
>Steinway until more recently. I understand that before he worked for 
>the company he was a private tech working for a stwy dealer. 
>Apparentlyit  was his persistent complaint about the strike line  on 
>the model  B that got there attention. Later as an employee he was 
>able to introduce a modification to the plate so that a horseshoe 
>shape is now incorporated into the plate instead of the strike line.
>    All this to say that although this may not be news to many it is 
>well known to some who deal with this in rebuilding shops and field 
>techs.

Hello Dale.  I find this quite interesting and am convinced by your 
examples.  Have you any idea what year the mods to the plate were 
brought in?

It would be interesting to see the strike proportion for the affected 
section.  The next B I get on close terms with, I'll get my cotton 
out and take some measurements.  I'll be fitting hammers to a couple 
of Os fairly soon and will test carefully as I proceed, since you say 
you've had the trouble with them too.  I've some serious work to do 
on an old C in London too -- the usual Steinway mess-up; heavy 
hammers and tons of lead.  The poor lady's spent $2000 on new ivory 
so we're going to have to use wooden plugs and save the existing keys 
when the lighter hammers go on.

I'm glad to hear you do the job properly.  I only wish there were 
more serious technicians over here and not just a handful, of which 
several with weird fads.

JD