Hello all, I'm rebuilding a Steinway L, circa 1962, and I just finished replacing all the wipps, hammers, shanks, flanges. All these parts are Tokiwa, and I must say I'm pretty happy with the quality and fit. For the hammers I went with abel encore naturals, since I've used these before on S&S and was very pleased, I did the same here. My question has to do with regulating strike distance to 1 3/4". As we know, many pianos have an adjustable rebound rail. We also know that Steinway does NOT. Each rebound cushion is part of the wippen, and does not have a separate up/down adjustment. The reason I bring this up, is that now with all new action parts in place, I find that I must lower the hammers all the way down, firmly resting on the cushions, but that still only yields about 1.5" strike distance. I did bench regulate about a half an octave just to see how it responded at the shortened SD, and it seemed perfectly fine, but I'd like to get it to proper specs. I realize that new parts need breaking in, and the new knuckles will also compress. I tried compressing a few of the cushions by pressing down on them for about 10 seconds, and that put me almost to 1 3/4", but they will likely puff up again. So I placed a box of jiffy weights along the tops (see pic) of a few of them, and if I leave for a day or so, do you think this will compress them enough to allow for proper strike distance, and possible even enough to actually get the shanks at least a bit off the cushions? Or is this not a good idea? Thanks in advance for any help on this issue. Cheers! Terry, I suspect the hammers are bored incorrectly! I'd take them off, plug and rebore to the proper specs. Regards, Joe Joe Garrett, R.P.T. (Oregon) Captain, Tool Police Squares R I -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090724/f6f53990/attachment.htm>
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