Backcheck height

[Avery Todd]

List,

Here's a reply from Joel Rappaport after I sent him a couple
of posts about this.

Avery

>OK, on to the backchecks:
>
>    Regarding the backchecks:  2mm below the tail at point of
>letoff is a good height for backchecks.  Often, it will have
>to be 3mm in the tenor simply because the hammers are so fat
>down there.
>    Something you can play around with to a limited extent is
>the angle of the backcheck head. Given that the hammer has
>to be at the same distance from the bottom of the string at
>check, changing the angle of the backcheck will move the
>backcheck head closer or farther away from the tail. If the
>angle is made just slightly more straight up-and-down, the
>backcheck head will be placed a little farther away from the
>hammer tail and still catch the hammer tail when the crown is,
>say, 15mm away from the bottom of the string.
>    There is an ideal angle of the backcheck head that puts
>the buckskin tangent to the arc of the hammer head in motion.
>Another factor, of course, is the shape of the hammer tail.
>    I remember working in the basement at Steinway on 57th
>Street a couple of days with Ron Coners a few years ago.  At
>that time, Ron warned us that the factory was installing the
>backchecks too low and at the C&A Dept. they had to use hammer
>removing pliers to "stretch" the backcheck wire. :-)  That is,
>they slid the backcheck up the wire to make it sit higher.
>Now you say the backchecks are installed too high, hmmmm?
>Well, it all averages out and gives us work to do, I guess.