Key Lead Replacement

[John Ross]

How about filing down the excess, and sealing the new surface of the lead?

John M. Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Farrell 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 7:08 PM
  Subject: Key Lead Replacement


  Looked at a 30 yo (guess) Yamaha G2 grand today with keys sticking. It has growing key leads. Never seen that on a Yamaha before. Grinding marks on many of the keys indicate that the leads were ground down previously. I'm recommending that they replace all key leads.

  I've leaded keys as part of setting up an action. But I've never just blindly replaced the leads, trying to duplicate the original setup. I know that the owners definitely want to go minimal cost with this one (Elk's Lodge).

  Seems to me leads are often of slightly different sizes, lengths, etc. If you are not carefully measuring Front Weights, etc., what the heck do you do? Seems to me the fastest way would be to pop the old lead out, weigh it, grab a lead of the same diameter, trim it to the original weight and install. Or is that just too trashy an approach? Do I tell them that we need to do a traditional weigh-off (but we can't because action center friction hasn't been addressed, etc.)? Evaluate the original FW curve and duplicate it (but that will mean some plugging, etc., i.e. more cost)? What is an acceptable, minimal approach?

  Thanks.

  Terry Farrell
  Farrell Piano

  www.farrellpiano.com
  terry at farrellpiano.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20071129/3cb4783b/attachment.html