Yesterday afternoon, I did a little prep on a Pearl River grand for a local dealer. It was intended as a replacement for a case damaged one of the same I had serviced (un-prepped) in the customer's home a couple of weeks ago. I had spent an hour or so chasing shift squeaks and other odd noises on the first one, and found myself doing the same on the replacement. The shift lever in this piano has a built in mounting hinge and is recessed into the underside of the keybed. The lever assembly had been carefully positioned so that the lever end that the pedal rod pushes up on, was wedged firmly against the side of the recess it was mounted in. This guaranteed a very loud SQUAWK every time the pedal was depressed. I decided to start there. After dropping the lyre, relocating the shift lever mount, gluing/wedging in place in the recess I enlarged a tad to allow this, replacing two of the three too short (I thought) screws with some a bit longer, and replacing the lyre, I pushed the pedal again. Squeak! I pulled the action and made a discovery. First, the shift lever ear that engages the keyframe is rough cast with sharp corners. Second, the slot in the keyframe has no hardwood (select or otherwise) for the shift lever to push against. It's just nice softwood end grain, and already obviously crushed. If it had been in the shop, I'd have added the hardwood. As it was, I filed the shift lever ear smooth, and rounded the corners some, applying a touch of VJ as squeak repellant. Action back in. Depress pedal. Criiiick! Action back out, and more discoveries. The shift guides in the cheek blocks don't fit the guide pins. Lots of slop. The dags are light gage formed sheet steel, lined with bushing cloth, and the action seems to be located fore and aft by two capstans in the back of the keyframe riding the inside of two of the dags on the keybed. Fine, I suppose, but the capstans were protruding some distance out of a couple of overly deep recesses cut into the back of the keyframe, and they cricked as they slid along (and dug into) the cloth on the dags. More VJ. Action back in. Pedal down. More squeaks, sqicks, cricks, ticks and creaks. Pulled action. Pencil graphite glide bolt platform inserts, lube shift return spring contact area, sand keybed and teflon powder. Action in, pedal down... silence. No! Surely something else is at least trying to squeak. But no, or if there was, I couldn't find it. On to tuning. What's that sound? Maybe it's just me (not the sound, the attitude), but it seems only right that a new piano should have positive bearing even in the killer octave. Perhaps I'm just being too picky, since so many much higher priced instruments don't, but it seems such a shame and a waste to put all those natural resources and man hours into something without meeting reasonable minimum performance standards. As I said, perhaps I'm just too picky and positive bearing in the killer octave is an unreasonable expectation as well as a somewhat less than universal condition. Also, a back scale in the 20mm range through the top two sections, and not a lot more than that down through the tenor doesn't leave much margin for error, or even normal soundboard deflection and settling - not to mention function. The odds of achieving and maintaining positive bearing go up dramatically as the back scale is lengthened, even if you don't change anything else BUT the back scale length. The concept ain't rocket science, even though lots of things besides back scale length could use some changing. By the time the tuning was done, so was I. The piano isn't concert ready, but it's combat ready, which is all they were after. Next! Ron N
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