Grand damper felt alignment

[BobDavis88@aol.com]

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Keith (his message quoted below),

No flame suit reinforcement needed as far as I'm concerned! I mostly agree 
with you. I think you are making a reasoned response to the vagaries of 
individual damper sets and I was speaking in general. There are also a couple 
of items of individual taste. 

I suppose if the original guide rail is going back in exactly the same spot 
after removal for bushing, the plate winds up in exactly the same spot after 
removal for finishing, and the original dampers were beautifully spaced, 
aligned, and traveled, I might also be tempted by the method you describe. 
However, this combination of events is rare enough that it doesn't come up 
too often for me, so I'd rather just start from scratch with felts aligned to 
the heads, and adjust the side pressure, travel, and timing after felting. In 
addition, many damper felts are as wide as the damper blocks, which doesn't 
permit too much offset without peeking out one side or another. 

I am not sorry to say that I agree with you about cosmetics. The piano is to 
me a truly beautiful object, and anything which pleases the eye in addition 
to the ear adds to the aesthetic experience. When I step on the pedal, I want 
the dampers to lift straight out of the strings as one, without any lateral 
movement of the damper blocks toward or away from each other. I don't know if 
a little traveling would be discernible in the function of the dampers, but 
it might, and it is prettier without. Where the agraffe spacing is uneven, 
some kind of compromise must be made. Whether the heads are spaced evenly and 
the felts offset, or the heads spaced directly over the strings, may depend 
upon the degree of unevenness and individual taste. I guess I'm saying that 
in most cases, the agraffe spacing isn't enough to bother me, if the 
traveling and timing are really really good. 

Bob Davis


kpiano@goldrush.com writes:

>    Yeah, I agree, that is what I thought but this is the way I was shown, 
> kinda. I am not sure of the reason, the person who showed me had for 
> putting the dampers in the piano as they glue them, but if I didn't on this 
> Baldwin they would look lousy. In the tenor section the agraffes are spaced 
> unevenly. The same in the last two Steinways I did. With the uneven string 
> spacing, the heads don't look like they are right with different spaces 
> between them. Uneven string spacing is hardly noticeable but damper spacing 
> stands out. On the Mason Hamlin AA, every third head was tapered to match 
> the heads to the fan of the strings. Figure out where to center that felt 
> when gluing. 
> This may be controversial but I think looks play more of a part in selling 
> a piano than sound. I don't believe I compromise the damping of the string 
> by off centering the felt to the head. 1 mm can make a big difference. My 
> damper jobs are getting high marks for looks and since I complained about 
> regulating behind someone else's glue job, the job is mine. It's amazing 
> how many regulation problems you can solve in the 15 to 30 seconds of 
> adjustment time if your wire bending pliers are close. I don't tighten the 
> screw, they just sit loose on the string.
>  I'm thinking I need to pay a little more attention to how the wires hang 
> through the tray without the felt on and check each head to see that the 
> wire drops straight away from the head. On this Baldwin, the board was 
> original so the guide rails and tray hadn't been messed with. The last two, 
> I had to have the guide rails moved about a mm. It would be nice to be able 
> to do a quick check of alignment in the piano. Anybody got a set of clip on 
> felts, all flat?
>     Okay, my neck is stretched out and on the block. I hope the steel hood 
> I added to my flame suit is strong enough. May be I should have drilled 
> some ventilation holes in it.
> 


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