[pianotech] Kimball Console Action Holddown Screws

[Gerald Groot]

All of the above.  :)  



-----Original Message----- 
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Ron Nossaman 
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 11:29 PM 
To: pianotech at ptg.org 
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Kimball Console Action Holddown Screws 

Gerald Groot wrote: 
> Exactly which is why I suggested a good solid head for the power tool. 
> Stupidity, carelessness or the wrong sized bits during usage is what
causes 
> messed up heads.  Use the right sized screw driver or bit for the screw 
> slot.  

So was it stupidity, carelessness, or the wrong sized bit that 
produced the near universally factory stripped heads in the 
first place? 


> If the screw heads are stripped badly, I wouldn't bother putting them in 
> again for the next person.  That next person just might be YOU.  

If the previous tech was smart enough to insure that the 
original screws were adequate, and lubricated enough to get 
them back in by hand (hand, that is), I wouldn't have a 
problem with it because it would still work. 


<Replace 
> them if possible.  Might be a bit of a pain to do it but, for the most
part, 
> those screws are the same width so carry some along with you.  

It's been probably ten years since I've had to pull a Kimball 
action. I don't think I'll be stocking up on replacement 
screws any time real soon now. 


<There are 
> plenty of them out there to work on.  You can have them all if you want? 

Through the 80's we had a bunch of Kimball dealers here (or 
maybe it just seemed so), and I did a lot of service work on 
them. Now, it's surprising to get four Kimball service calls a 
year. Why? My experience has been that Kimballs went out of 
tune farther, and faster, than almost anything out there, so 
it's not that they don't need service. Where did they all go? 

So the bottom line is that this isn't worth the baggage to me 
to artificially enhance the bottom line if the original screws 
will still do the job adequately. When there's no indication 
that what we did made a functional performance difference, 
what is it, exactly, that we do for a living? 
Ron N 



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