[CAUT] Steinway hammer spec.

[Keith Roberts]

What about downweight? You would have to have  a lighter hammer to have the
same downweight or did that come back to normal too?
Keith Roberts

----- Original Message -----
From: "Porritt, David" <dporritt at mail.smu.edu>
To: "College and University Technicians" <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 7:20 AM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway hammer spec.


> 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
>
>
>
>