Factory Overstrike

[Phillip Ford]

>I experienced a new low today. I did a bunch of work on a 6' Hyundai 
>action (10 yo) and was set to do a bench regulation. Using my pre-measured 
>string heights, I found that I obviously made a gross mistake with my 
>measurement somehow. So I drove the 40 miles back to the piano and 
>re-measured - my original measurements were correct. The hammers on this 
>thing were bored to produce a full quarter-inch overstrike.
>
>What are the correct words here - this is amazing - did they build all 
>their pianos this way? Don't they just have some jig in the factory where 
>all hammers for this model are drilled the same way? Did somebody's finger 
>get in there and jacked the jig up a quarter inch?
>
>Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Maybe I just haven't been around 
>long enough!
>
>Terry Farrell

Hi Terry,

Could you clarify what you mean by overstrike?  Are the hammers square to 
the shank?  Or are they square to the strings with a short bore?

We had a discussion about this a few months back.  You might check the 
archives.  Some of it ended up in the Journal Q & A Roundtable a few months 
ago as well.  The Feurich 220 grand that I have (whose agraffes were 
recently mentioned) had a very short bore (I don't remember the numbers 
offhand, but it may have been more than 1/4 inch), but the hammers were 
angled back so that they were striking square to the strings.  As far as I 
know this was the original setup.  This is a high quality piano with a 
Renner action.  The action regulated properly with things set up this way, 
so I have to believe it was deliberate.  This generated a discussion about 
whether the 'proper' setup is to have the hammers square to the 
shanks.  When I replaced the hammers I duplicated this setup.  The piano 
plays and sounds fine.

Phil Ford