Rob I have found that a rule of thumb for ALL '70 - '90 era Kimball consoles is to replace ALL the center pins, hammers, jacks and wippens, regardless of which pins seem to need it. And even then, I've found that after replacing the pins, and making sure the centers were free, a year or two later, some of the centers tighten up again. Especially in humid weather. Perhaps the problem might be in the felt used in the bushings, and the best way to solve the problem is to replace the parts, instead of just repinning them. But that would make it almost cost prohibitive. Wim Blees RPT Hawaii -----Original Message----- From: Rob McCall <rob at mccallpiano.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Sat, Jul 30, 2011 8:35 pm Subject: [pianotech] Guess which pin... Greetings, I have a 1982 Kimball Console action in my shop. Many of the keys were sticking n the piano. Looking at it in the piano, the problem didn't appear to be the eys, at all. It was definitely in the action. However, it was difficult to tell hich center pin it was. At first it looked like the hammer butt flange pin eeded to be re-pinned. So I did that. It fixed it momentarily. Then it tarted to stick again. Looking at it, it looked like the wippen center pin ight be the problem since it wasn't coming all the way back down when the key as released. Although, I wasn't clear if it was because the jack center wasn't esetting all the way, either. As the problems were over the entire upper third f the action to one degree or another, we agreed to have me take the action and ork at it on my bench. As it turns out, about 30 percent of the hammer butt flanges needed re-pinning. lso, about 20 percent of the jack centers had to be re-pinned. Additionally, lmost 50 percent of the wippens needed to be re-pinned. It was hit and miss, ith some notes needing all 3 pins changed, others 2 pins, and some only 1 pin, hile some remained unchanged. I ended up taking pretty much every hammer and ippen assembly off to evaluate all 3 pins. It seemed very time-consuming, so my question is this... What do you look at, or manipulate, to determine which pin is the culprit while he action is still in the piano or on the workbench? How do you test them all o determine the troublemaker without disassembling most of the action? Obviously, my method works very well, but, as I mentioned, it's very ime--consuming. Any thoughts or insight is greatly appreciated. Regards, Rob McCall McCall Piano Service, LLC ww.mccallpiano.com urrieta, CA 51-698-1875 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110731/5a01bf64/attachment.htm>
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