wierd hammer line

[J Patrick Draine]

Juia,
How hammers line up when the stack is off the keyframe, and the  
hammers are all lifted 90 degrees (and much more, depending) is  
irrelevant, even though it may "look bad." The hammers don't really  
need to rotate that far forward in the piano. That said, if those  
drop screws really are adjusted all willy nilly, they may interfere  
with some of hammers from flopping all the way forward on the bench.
The real question is, how is the drop when the action is assembled  
and in the piano?
Probably pretty bad, in which case the regulation could be a factor  
in the lack of power on certain notes. Have you checked the action  
centers, especially on the weak notes? Samicks have had problems with  
seizing action centers (damper lever centers too!) -- you may need to  
repin some culprits, and the tone of those notes may improve.
Patrick Draine

On Mar 31, 2006, at 1:52 AM, KeyKat88 at aol.com wrote:

> Greetings,
>
>            On a Samick 6' grand when the stack is pulled out and  
> all the hammers are lifted forward, (as when examining the jack  
> windows) I noticed that the hammer line is "all over the place"(!)  
> I don't believe I have ever seen this unevenness! It is really un- 
> nerving!  I mean some hammers stop way forward and others are 1" to  
> 2" back further. I mean; its not even a smooth "wave" it looks,  
> well... radical and...wrong. I have been tuning pianos for 3 years,  
> and have only done one grand regulation in that time. (People just  
> dont ask for it.) Piano tech school was 4 years ago for me, so I  
> cant remember what forward hammer-line should look like and I dont  
> own a grand piano (yet) to check it out.
>
>              The piano is about 15 years old and also the drop  
> screws are screwed in all unevenly (all different depths  
> drastically unveven from adjacent neighbors). I would think that  
> being a relatively young piano, and played maybe 2 hours a day  
> average, that the regulation would look more even than this. The  
> lady told me that when the piano was new she had it regulated and  
> paid $400 to have it done. So this "regulation" isnt factory. THe  
> only thing that looks any decent is the key leveling and the back  
> checking.
>
>                Shouldnt the regulation look more even on a newer  
> piano ie: the capstans all nearly the same height and letoff  
> buttons and drop screws almost the same to their neighbors?
>
> Thanks
> Julia Gottshall
> Reading, PA