Lyre Braces

[Avery Todd]

List,

This came from a different list but thought some of you who work on newer
Baldwin's might be particularly interested.

Avery

 > On 4/2/02 at 4:47 PM Michelle L Stranges wrote:
 >
 > >Hello folks!!
 > >
 > >Has anyone ever tried to put some sort of "turnbuckle" in Steinway
 > >(or any other grands') lyre braces to take up the space that causes
 > >knocking/rocking problems??
 > >
 > >I like the newer Baldwin grand idea for helping this.
 > >
 > >(The "T" screw at the top that you twist into a space cut out in
 > >the underside of the keybed to make fit tight.)
 > >
 > >Anyone try doing this Baldwin idea on other pianos???
 > >
 > >:) michelle
 > >stranges@oswego.edu

I sent this to Joel Rappaport and below are his comments about it (with
his permission):

>  As far as the comments from Michelle L Stranges on the current Baldwin
>system, if it is the same system that we experienced for the last four
>summers at Tanglewood, all I can say is "no, no, No NO" IMHO.  Those little
>T-screws go into a brass sleeve that is knurled and inserted into a hole
>drilled into the top of the wooden support stick.  Problem is, the sleeve
>goes into end grain and even though knurled, has a tendency to become loose
>so that not only is the stick no longer adjustable, you can't shorten it
>enough to remove it.  So the whole lyre now has to come off to repair the
>exquisitely engineered feature.  The factory 'solution' is to drop CA glue
>around the sleeve to 'fix' it in the wood.  We tried that at Tanglewood and
>the result was that the sleeve then twirled around in the CA glue instead of
>the wood.  We had to (with great trouble) remove the sleeve and glue veneer
>into the hole to provide some flat grain, then reinsert the sleeve.  That
>was the only thing that worked.  This was probably the one most common
>complaint we had to trouble shoot, even more than tuning calls.
>Ted Sambell's and Denis Brassard's invention sounds so much better.  And I
>have seen the threaded brass cup on Bösendorfer grands, too.  It's a nice,
>simple and _workable_ solution.