[CAUT] Steinway hammer spec.

[Porritt, David]

I just wanted to respond back about my experiment in moving the hammers
to a more nearly normal position.  In this D the hammers toward the bass
were hung much closer to 5" than 5.125" and I wanted to move them out.
I did, it worked, no problems with back-checks, sostenuto etc.  The
Ronsen Wurzens sound great though I've had to use an artist's brush
worth of acetone/keytop on the bass and last sections, and a little in
the tenor.  They just needed a little more punch in that hall.  I'm just
glad I didn't run into geometry problems!

dave

David M. Porritt
dporritt at smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
A440A at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 4:22 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway hammer spec.

Dave writes: 
<<  the tails of the bass hammers are pretty
close to the wippen (OK repetition!) and I'd like to move them out to be
the same as the treble hammers.  Can anyone see a problem waiting to
happen here?  >>

Greetings, 
     As the hammer moves farther out on the shank, you will need to
space 
them more to the treble, since the rake of the bass strings goes that
way.  
Otherwise, I can't see any problem.  (of course, I have been smacked by
things I 
didn't see for a long, long time.).  You might want to double check that
you 
don't have backcheck clearance problems if you do increase the length.
Then that 
gets into sostenuto rod clearance, which gets into tab  lengths on the 
underlever post, which might be dependent on dampertray geometry.  Hell,
before you 
know it, you might need to move the bridges, in which case it might be
easier 
to simply put in a new pinblock and soundboard so you can get it exactly

right.... 
   I have never found any tonal difference in moving hammers 1/8" in the
bass 
section on a D, but that ain't to say it didn't happen while I wasn't 
looking. 
Regards,   

Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html