Antique damper regulation

[wimblees at aol.com]

Greg

Adjusting the Chickering damper is actually quite ingenious, and very easy, once you get the hang of it. 

The first thing you need to do is raise the damper upstop rail. To adjust the damper wire up or down, lift the damper until it clears the others, and turn the whole head and wire. To adjust the damper head to the left or right, lift the damper as high as you can, and turn the head upside down?and all the way around.

As I said, once you get the?hang of it, you wonder why all dampers can't be adjusted as easy as this.?

Good?luck. ?


Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT
Piano Tuner/Technician
Mililani, Oahu, HI
808-349-2943
Author of: 
The Business of Piano Tuning
available from Potter Press
www.pianotuning.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Graham <grahampianos at yahoo.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Sun, 5 Oct 2008 4:41 pm
Subject: Antique damper regulation



This may be basic for folks with antique piano experience, but...

How do you regulate damper wires on antiques where the wire screws into the 
damper lift flange.  

I've been asked to touch up a late 1800's Chickering grand, straight strung.  
Several bass dampers are a little high.  Normally, I'd just loosen the screw, 
let the damper wire drop in the lifter flange, and tighten back up.  Can't do 
that here.  It looks like I need to screw the wire down a turn or two, but can't 
get the head above the adjacent heads.  I thought about raising the upstop rail, 
but doubt that will get me enough height.  And then there's the one next to the 
plate beam.   

There must be something simple I'm missing here, but I didn't want to experiment 
with 110 year old damper wire.  

Greg Graham

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