Hello - I am regulating a 1984 6'9" Schimmel grand. It has a Renner action, and the letoff buttons are the wooden dowel type which screw directly into the underside of the hammer rail. My problem is that I can't get letoff close enough to the string. The closest I can get it is about 7 mm, and that's if the dowel is screwed all the way up against the bottom of the hammer rail. I've checked and double-checked all of my string height measurements, and it just won't work. I've only regulated about 10 or 15 actions, so I'm still learning, but the only way I can see to get the buttons up higher would be to shim the entire hammer rail so it sits higher than the action brackets would indicate it should. There's plenty of room under the pinblock to take it as high as I need to, but I'm not sure that this is the proper fix for the problem. I'm afraid a change in hammer flange height might create checking problems or other regulation issues. I probably would only need to raise the rail a few millimeters to get the letoff I need, but why would this piano have come out of the factory with such a huge geometry problem? Am I missing something? Is this one of those "action spread problems" that I've heard about in Technical Institute classes? -- Scott A. Helms, RPT Helms Music Enterprises (269) 381-4521 www.helmsmusic.net
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