Steinway action noise

[Greg Newell]

Ric & List,

	I guess what I haven't said so far is that this struggling music
department in an all girls Catholic high school (privately funded) didn't
have the money for the restoration in the first place (not my fault) and
therefore the bean counters (not the music director) went with the cheapest
estimate. Because I do a fair amount of other work for this music director
at the school I'm inclined to do what I can without cheating myself. 
	As mentioned I do have to return and take a good look at the
dampers. Something is quite messed up here and for now it's a somewhat fun
little puzzle. Even with a few properly regulated keys I still get a little
jack slap. I know that I could simply put a thicker felt in the jack window
but what I'm really after here is why this is happening. Is there a better
way to go about this than simply shimming things? If I could move the rails
should I?

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Richard Brekne
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 5:22 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Steinway action noise

Hi Greg...

Just got through reading all the posts on this one... especially Bob 
Davis's ....

Its clear that whomever did the work you are supposed to fix up botched 
the job completely and I'd echo Bob's advice not to bail the owners out 
too easily.  I'd imagine that at this point you are probably looking at 
at least as much work fixing it up as your origional bid was... probably 
a bit more because you have to re-establish where every thing is 
supposed to be.  Probably starting from key heights (back and balance 
rail felts) and on up.

If you can be sure the fellow didnt touch the damper screws and adjust 
the dampers at all... then you could use that as a guide to how high the 
key ends should be with the original key end felt thickness....  I 
suppose you could fairly easily get back well into the ball park from 
there.

Shesssh... tho... one is almost tempted to plop the thing back in their 
lap and say... next time around pay for someone you KNOW can do the job 
instead of looking for the cheapest possible solution.

I'll be interested to see how this pans out.

Cheers
RicB