[CAUT] add capstans to tray?

[David Skolnik]

RicB -
We know you meant "damper lift", not "hammer lift".  Otherwise, I'll 
take two opportunities to prove my ignorance.  Or not.  I gotta tell 
you,  I'm reading this over and over and I isn't getting it.  It 
seems to be mixing up the key based damper lift with the sustain 
pedal lift.  Traditionally, you would set your sample damper heights 
to the key lift (1/3 to 1/2, no?), then set the other damper levers 
to the same height.  You would then shim or scrape to refine key 
lift, and the same for tray (sustain pedal) lift.  I would have 
thought that the capstans would address the latter step.  How do the 
capstans have anything to do with key lift?  And refining the damper 
lift by loosening the screw and readjusting the wire doesn't make 
sense.  Help me understand.

David Skolnik


At 03:27 PM 3/23/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Mark...
>
>I cant speak for any article on the subject... but the Yamaha 
>Academy at Hamamatsu teaches that the reasons for capstans is to 
>assure that each hammer lifts at exactly half blow. Since at the 
>time they only had this feature on CF III's and I was at masters 
>level I only had this shown to me quickly and only then because I 
>was ahead of pace enough that they bothered to run me through it.
>
>One set samples for each section so that the damper lever started in 
>motion with the hammer at half blow for all samples.  Then one 
>leveled the capstans with a straight edge from below.  At that point 
>we were taught that these were not to be adjusted again unless it 
>was to re-level the entire set of capstans.
>
>They were NOT to be used to fine adjust damper lift from the 
>strings. This was to be done as normal by loosening the damper wire 
>screw and raising or lowering the damper as required.  They were 
>very adamant about that.
>
>Cheers
>RicB
>
>    can you remind me the how's & why's on this, or point me back to a
>    previous
>    discussion, PTJournal article, etc.?
>
>    thanks,
>    Mark Cramer,RPT
>    Brandon University