Bechstein hammer bore

[Richard Brekne]

Hi folks..

Just got done doing some preliminaries for a hammer change on a 
Bechstein B from about 15 years ago.  Some realllly creative hanging was 
done at the factory. Starting at the lowest tenor note the rake is about 
8 degrees backover.... away from the front of the piano and this ends up 
fairly perpendicular to the shank at note 88.  String height starts at 
194 at the low tenor tops at 197 at the tenor treble break, grads out to 
195 at the treble diskant break and ends up at 194 at note 88.  Weird is 
that at the low tenor the bore length looks to be about 46 mm and this 
gradually goes to 43 mm at note 88.  I could understand it if they'd had 
a shorter bore length in the middle and then getting longer again at the 
top given the string length... but they simply graduated to a 43 mm bore 
length all the way up.

I'm having a hard time figuring if there is any rational reason for any 
of this... or if this all was just a classic muckup.  If the later... 
then one has to wonder... why bother making it good if there is so much 
muck out there to begin with that pianists evidently are perfectly happy 
with.  This piano is one of the more popular ones at the Conservatory 
amoung the teachers.

Any comments or thoughts would be welcome.

Cheers
RicB