Client Care and Spinnet Dampers: HELP!

[Mark Ultsch]

Hi Greg,

I've been there not too long ago with exactly the same symptoms.    Not one damper was obnoxiously leaking.  I'm sure you'll get more expert suggestions than my own, but here's my story: 

My customer, fortunately, didn't blame me or my tuning.  I did explain that since the piano is now in tune, vibrating  strings from one note will cause more sympathetic vibrations in others notes.  I silently held a bass note and played a few notes which were harmonics to demonstrate.  So, the increased bleedthrough becomes the fault of a good tuning--not me.

I checked the obvious:  damper follow through, alignment, petrified dampers, spring tension, muting strings.  It's really hard to check if the hitch pin end of the damper is lifting first, or is, in fact, seating at all (how do you easily do that someone???).  I found no problems.  I decided to replace the dampers.

Upon installing new dampers (I really like Spurlocks method but don't count on the bass strings being near coplanar), I wondered if one end of the damper is near a node.  Before gluing, I observed that locating the new dampers at a different spot along the speaking length of the string reduced the ringing of harmonics.  It helped considerably, and the customer was pleased.  I still wonder if I should have made new dampers that were a different length than the originals, but my R & D budget has been surpassed.   Let me know if you can answer that question for me.

(I would suppose that dampers dont' do a really good job on longitudinal waves.  Anyone care to comment?)

I hope some of this narrative helps.

Mark Ultsch, RPT
Madison Chapter

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jim Johnson 
  To: Pianotech List 
  Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 9:10 PM
  Subject: Re: Client Care and Spinnet Dampers: HELP!


  Don't think of what you have to do to make your customer happy,  think of what you must do to keep her from becoming an unhappy customer who is potentially a very damaging liability to your reputation.  One unhappy customer can undo the good created by many happy customers.

  You might want to bite the bullet and replace the bass damper felts.  If you are getting sympathetic leakage in the bass, this could solve the problem.  The bass damper felt may be overly dense and not doing a very good job even though they seem to dampen ok when played as individual notes.
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Geoffrey Arnold 
    To: pianotech at ptg.org 
    Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:38 PM
    Subject: Client Care and Spinnet Dampers: HELP!



    Hi All,

    Well it's deja vu for me. I thought I'd learned my lesson the last time this happened. I get a call for a tuning and "pedal repair". When I arrive the damper pedal rod is engaged but the pedal regulated with so much play as never to reach damper lift. Easy fix, regulate pedal, achieve damper lift. I then suddenly notice copious bleedthrough. I point out the "echo" to the customer and say the dampers are old and misaligned, and another technician must have sacrificed pedal play for quieting the bleedthrough. I would leave it with pedal play, but if the "echo" bothered her I would come back free of charge and try to minimize it.

    She does call, and I do return. This time I back the pedal all the way to where it was when I first met the piano. At this point I have not touched a single damper head, or damper wire. The damper lift rod is miles from any damper lever, so all dampers are seated.And still the massive echo. I neglected to play the piano before regulating the pedal on my very first visit, so I don't recall if it had the bleedthrough then. But intellectually I know, tuning the piano as I did, and pedal regulation could not have caused this pervasive damper bleeding. I try to delicately approach the issue, essentially inquiring "are you sure this echo wasn't there before"... "no, I DEFINITELY would have noticed it, I can't even play it" and the implied "what did you do to my piano!".... 
    The one previous time I reached this kind of exchange I stubbornly stuck to my intellectual conclusion that anything I could have done during tuning would not have affected the dampers this much, and if the client wants to remedy the ailing dampers I would be happy to help but they'll have to pay for it. Now I am hopefully a little wiser, and would like to keep my customers so I said "don't worry, this is my problem not yours, I'm not done here until the problem is fixed..."

    Three hours later (of second visit to house), every damper is seated. When I push each string, the damper follows, showing me that it is bearing against the string, and there is sufficient tension if the damper head follows. I strengthened each damper spring in the bass and low tenor for good measure, requiring that I remove the spinnet action, which is so much fun. I even tried needling a few offensive dampers. This is a Baldwin Spinnet from the 60s. The dampers are a little compacted, but nothing spilled on them, and not too hard or ratty. The real killer is that with a slow chromatic check, no single note rings noticeably (play a note, press hand against string, no change in echo). Laying a forearm across all the strings in tenor does not change the echo. Nor a forearm across bass, unless you really push, and then the echo does die. This for me is to assess if it is indeed string noise, or soundboard/backscale noise, but its so loud it must be string noise. If I play a forte f-major in the tenor, and arm mute it, the echo sings loud. If I play same chord and arm mute the bass, lower than the notes I played, it does significantly dampen the echo. This is why I focused primarily on bass dampers. One or two of which I found mildly offensive, but all at least dampen adequately.

    I would like advice on good upright damping. But also on this customer quandary, when you reach a juncture where you as the technician feel certain the piano has a chronic ailment that predated your ever meeting it, and the client feeling you caused categorical damper failure just by tuning. Of course now, I have removed the action, and replaced it, and bent many damper wires, so now my actions really could have "caused" or at least worsened the problem (although I did so methodically and with the intention of improving the symptoms) I can no longer say, I never touched the dampers, not my fault. How much free time to I give here, for a happy customer? How does one establish professional expertise and trust, without saying "its not my fault, so not my problem"?


    Thank you tuner support group!

    Greg Arnold
    www.welltemperedtuning.com



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