Upright Action mounting pins

Alan Barnard tune4u@earthlink.net
Wed Mar 1 21:47:17 MST 2006


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Well, now (where'd this blueness come from?) ... strike point is key, and most critical at the treble to be sure. 

Shape of hammers comes into play, big time. If you had new or newly filed hammers, it would be best (else, the strike point would have to be changed again when you replaced the hammers) but you can leave the two center posts turned down so they do not touch the action at all, for the moment, and lower the rightmost one until you find the sweet spot where the tone is loudest and clearest. Very hard to judge by eyeball, do it by sound. At the top it will not be far below the V.

Your bass strike point is less critical. If the strings are oldish, look under the dampers; the strings will be brighter there. See if the action is at its "historical" position in the bass (after setting the treble). Again, the alignment can be tweaked looking for loud and clear. If using an ETD, you can actually read a pattern of sounding partials to help in your adjustment. If the 5th and 6th partials are fairly strong, you are close.

If you move the bass, recheck the treble.

When all is well, I'd recommend removing the action, placing a long straight-edge or level  from the bass to the treble post and raising the middle post(s) until they are truly in line. Replace the action and check both ends AND make sure it is evenly seated on all posts.

Factory adjustment? What's that?

Alan Barnard
Salem, Missouri


----- Original Message ----- 
From: 
To: pianotech@ptg.org
Sent: 03/01/2006 3:16:51 PM 
Subject: Upright Action mounting pins


Hi, group!

My name is Rex Burrus from Chicago and I'm new to the list and recently new to piano technology having been indoctrinated by classes of a local mentor and taken under the wings of the Chicago PTG chapter early in 2005.  I've been tuning mainly, but also work the technology angle of pianos, plus work on players for all of one year now.

Now for my juicy question du jur...

I have on two occasions come to wonder about action mounting in an upright.  In both cases, I have found the action to be somewhat ajar and not even settled upon the mounting pins in the keybed which have made these pianos play lousy.  The one piano was completely cured simply by repositioning the action properly and the customer was so overjoyed that I made extra money on that tuning.  On my current project, I found that the action is not properly resting on all the mounting pins.  In fact the middle two pins are not even in contact with the wells in the action supports.  These pins are threaded and squared so that turning them moves the mounting pins up and down in the keybed.  I suspect that at another time, some "tooner" ran into trouble seating the action and at a minimum raised the treble end as the treble hammers were striking the v-bar and making no sound.  So, minimally, I'll lower the far upper mounting pin and this should cause all mountings to fall into proper alignment.  Intellectually, I'm wondering overall what any procedure might be to precisely locate an action using these mounting pins.  I understand that raising or lowering the action changes the striking point of the hammers on the speaking length of the wires, so I'm curious as to how the striking point is found or if there are any good references on this, and what might be a proper procedure for adjusting (regulating?) the mounting pins in the keybed of an upright?  Is this a factory only adjustment?

Thanx!

PIANO TUNING by REX!
Repairs and adjustments, also.
(708) 418-0750
teslaspark@aol.com
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