Can't speak for RB but the capstan system that Nossaman and others (including me) use is to address the lift with the damper pedal. The initial setting for the key lift is done by indexing the levers to the key end felt. Then, rather than shimming the tray felt, you adjust the capstans to achieve uniform lift with the pedal. David Love davidlovepianos at comcast.net www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Skolnik Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 8:44 PM To: College and University Technicians Subject: Re: [CAUT] add capstans to tray? 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
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