[pianotech] What is the Steinway term for 'whippen'

[John Delacour]

At 03:36 -0500 16/11/2010, tnrwim at aol.com wrote:

>I don't know what the Steinway word for whippen is, since I believe 
>corporal punishment of factory workers is now against the law, but I 
>believe the part most piano technicians call a wippen*, is called a 
>repetition lever at Steinway.
>
>* While some technicians call a repetition lever a whippen, it is 
>not the correct spelling of this part of the a piano. This, 
>according to Jim Ellis, RPT.

The American term, however spelt, is a corruption of the German word 
for see-saw, Wippe and/or the German verb Wippen, which means, among 
other interesting meanings, to balance.  In the old days some 
technicians called them wipps.  In any case there is no h in the 
word.  There is no law that says piano technicians must be illiterate.

Steinway's terms are a joke.  They even cast one of their famous 
illiterate inventions into their plate : the "Capo d'Astro", which 
has no meaning at all.

Herrburger, the great action-maker, refers to the main body of the 
lever as the "rider" and to the sprung lever as the "repeating-lever"

In England we generally call the whole thing just the "lever", short 
for "intermediate lever", and the repeating-lever the 
"repetition-lever" or "cradle".

JD