key bushings

[Otto Keyes]

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--Boundary_(ID_Kin16h88TAVeElTEjr3MYw)
This is quite a contrast to the Russian console I did for a friend several years back.  It had floated in somebody's basement for awhile before he hauled it away.  As a cabinet maker, he made a whole new case for it, while it was my task to glue the rest of it back together. (You know the dumb things friends talk you into, & you kick yourself because you really do know better, but you're in too deep, & he already has the case made for it.)  The case ended up being the best part, but it did work & sound somewhat like a percussion stringed instrument when it was all over.  

The casting of the plate was all over the place.  Action quality & geometry would have made even Aeolian cringe.  The screw slots were nowhere near the center of the screws.  It did not have those neat adjustable key bushings.  A Polish pianist friend said it was a 2nd quality of 3 in the Russian piano industry of the time.  I'd sure hate to have seen the 3rd.  That was one I was glad to see the back of, but they are still enjoying it today.

Otto
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Delwin D Fandrich 
  To: College and University Technicians 
  Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 11:33 AM
  Subject: Re: key bushings


  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Susan Kline 
    To: College and University Technicians 
    Sent: December 18, 2002 11:49 AM
    Subject: Re: key bushings


    At 11:03 AM 12/18/2002 -0800, you wrote:

      The material didn't stand up well under long-term use. There was no way to fit them to various size pins and pins do vary in width. There was no way to adjust them to take up wear and they did wear. There was no way to hold them in the key mortise -- the ribbed ends just didn't make it. At the time there was no adhesive that would bond to the stuff to hold them in the mortise. They varied in size overly much. The manufacturer apparently used a multi-cavity mold and the cavities seemed to vary some. 
       
      I think that about covers it....

    But aside from THAT, they were just fine! <grin> 

    Susan 

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  I find it some frustrating that in this so-called modern age with our sophisticated design techniques, our computers, our automated tooling and machinery that shameful excuse for a keybushing is the best we can do. Somebody actually spent time and money on this ridiculous thing. Somebody should have been ashamed of themselves but probably didn't know enough about the real piano world to be so.

  The traditional key bushing certainly needs improving, but that atrocity was, and is, an affront to our industry and to the buying public. 

  Then consider, in the mid- to late-1880s a small piano maker in St Petersburg, Russia came up with this:






  Beautifully made. Precisely detailed. Leather bushed. Fully adjustable -- those are two nicely and finely threaded screws going in from the side and those are two pins going down from the top neatly fitting in machined grooves in those screws. And, yes, they are still fully functional after some 125 or so years.

  Ain't progress grand....

  Del  



--Boundary_(ID_Kin16h88TAVeElTEjr3MYw)
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