Ed has put this well. The strate-mate is a good way to take out the curve that is causing termination noise. Fine leveling involves more. Having the strate-mate parallel to the key-bed ensures that it won't be inducing out-of-level conditions. I find it works well around the capos. I came back with the hook and level and had to touch up three or four strings. Where I had trouble was with the bichord and trichord agraffes. When I had taken up the curve in the strings they ran relatively straight from the holes in the agraffes. Problem was, despite the reputedly fine make, the holes in the agraffe were not level. Having already taken up the slack made by the stiffness of the strings, I had much less to work with when fine-leveling. On some of the worst I had to accept "half-way-there". I will be doing those with a level and hook only in the future to avoid losing room for adjustment. Simply a strategy to get as close to level together for the benefit of damping and hammer mating. Some of those strings, "apostrophes", won't get any curve taken out of them. Not-ideal, but that is the best that can be got out of the piano with the less-then-ideal part. Andrew At 10:21 PM 10/22/2005, you wrote: ><<For fine leveling though, well lets say that I have my own negative >thoughts. A little off from plumb and the whole thing gives tilted results.>> > >Greetings, > I haven't found this to be much of a problem. If the strate-mate is >lifting the strings .125"-.150", the final alteration of the string >height is about >.025"-.050" at most. If the tool is out of plumb by .020", the out of plumb >resulting at the string height is hard to measure. > That said, I don't use the tool for mating hammers to strings, just to >save work as I take out the majority of the curvature as it leaves >the agraffe or >capo. > For final leveling, the individual treatment of the strings is really the >only way to go. >Regards, >Ed Foote RPT > >_______________________________________________ >pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
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