These Heintzmans are not that rare - I am sure that many were built. I know two shops close by that have both had a half dozen of these go through, sometimes two at once. I have also seen several makes of German transposing pianos. The principle is very clever. I haven't seen one recently but if memory serves: the wippens have dowel capstans on wires instead of cloth wippen heels. The capstans come to rest on the felted key ends. The keys are all straight, and the capstan wires (coming down from the wips) are bent is such a way that the capstans are spaced perfectly evenly from # 1 through # 88. Thus the key frame can slide left and right (in increments of 1/2" or whatever) and the capstans will always be spaced perfectly (almost) to the keys. I hope someone posts photos. Jurgen Goering -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 830 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090107/b7f85f63/attachment.bin>
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