[CAUT] balancier/wippens report

Israel Stein custos3 at comcast.net
Mon Dec 18 22:59:09 MST 2006


At 11:00 AM 12/18/2006, David Skolnik <davidskolnik at optonline.net>
  wrote:
>>Jon,
>>
>>You may be on to something here. So far I had two Steinways with 
>>seemingly "intractable" checking problems - one B at San Francisco 
>>State and one D in a client's home. Everything mentioned on this 
>>list in this thread was tried (and a few more things too),
>
>Would you say what those more things were?

I'll have to dig through the files in school for the B - it was the 
other tech here who actually did the work. We did discuss it back and 
fort a lot though.... On the D I played with the regulation an awful lot...


>>and nothing seemed to work. Replacing the backchecks with the 
>>Tokiwa- made old-style Steinway backchecks (longer) cleared up all 
>>the problems on both pianos ($150/set, Pianotek). It seems that on 
>>a lot of them the hammer tails are just too short for the new 
>>style, shorter backchecks...
>>
>>Israel Stein
>
>Israel - As with Wim - you also did not indicate the manufacturing 
>year of your pianos.

The D is 1999. The B has been rebuilt so many times with such a 
mishmash of parts that the year of manufacture is basically irrelevant...

>  It's true that there was a period when the tails were extremely 
> short, but that's not too recent, in my experience.  If it were 
> only the height of the checks in relation to the tails, why 
> couldn't you simply raise the backchecks?

How? Those Steinway backcheck wires are pressure fit on both ends - 
you don't have threads on which you could "raise" the backchecks...

>As an experiment, it falls short of completely explaining the issue, 
>since there are undoubtedly differences in a number of 
>characteristics between the two brands.  Can you look at the two 
>side by side and compare them?

I did. The Tokiwa backchecks look just like the old Steinway 
backchecks - both in length and in shape (longer and fatter/rounder 
at the top than the current Steinway backcheck). See, I had an extra 
one floating around, and so I put it on one of the worst-checking 
notes on the D - and presto, all the problems went away. That's good 
enough for me. It was also good enough for the client - he paid for 
the replacement of all of them, and loves the results. And if Wim is 
willing - I'll be glad to send him one of my 2 leftover Tokiwa 
backchecks to try out... And having prepped one hell of a lot of 
Steinway grands at two Steinway dealers (Boston and San Francisco) 
over the years, I'm really not interested in screwing around with 
Steinway backchecks any more than I absolutely have to - they gave me 
enough grey hairs already...

Israel Stein


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