[pianotech] Damper wire bushing lubrication?

[Cy Shuster]

Andrés Oorebeck showed this trick two years ago. Pull the action, and just brush the Protek on the damper wires, right under the guide rail. Then step on the pedal a few times, and voila! (Shouldn't it be "voici"?). I use a foam brush, which is also great for painting metal polish on key capstans.

--Cy--

Cy Shuster, RPT
Albuquerque, NM

www.shusterpiano.com
www.facebook.com/shusterpiano

On Sep 4, 2011, at 5:32 AM, Mark Dierauf wrote:

> I've used Protek to reduce noise in at least one case. The customer had a concern about damper "whoosh" on a Kawai RX2. The piano was brand new and the dampers seemed fine. Actually it was very good and not particularly noisy at all, with the trichord felt trimmed quite close to the underside of the new clean, shiny strings. It turned out that this was his very first piano and he was simply obsessing about a sound that he didn't understand to me normal. At any rate, I discovered that if I raised the dampers until the felt just cleared the strings, and then pushed it the rest of the way down, a slight but noticeable additional "whoosh" could be heard coming from the wires in the guide rail bushings. I put a drop of Protek on each wire, near the head, and let it run down into the bushing while working the damper. When I had done the whole set there was indeed a reduction in noise. So it's something that might be worth doing, especially perhaps in a recording studio.
> 
> - Mark