[CAUT] Schwander balancier pinning

[Porritt, David]

I agree with you wholeheartedly - I was mildly pulling your leg with
that question.  I have never been one for heroic repair of old parts.
One has to value their time at zero to make that reasoning work.  I do
wish that we could order new parts and know that they are pinned
properly and need no further work done but alas, that's just not the
case.  

Over spring break (next week) I'm putting all new action parts on a
Steinway B from 1983 that's had just one set of new hammers in its life.
I've ordered as soft a hammer as I can get as this piano is located in a
practice room that's just 9' 11".  That leaves just 25" for bench and
player.  The sound at the moment is oppressive!

dave

David M. Porritt, RPT
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: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 12:41 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Schwander balancier pinning

 Dave asks:
<< The above assumes that you get new parts with nice even pinning.
Where
do you get yours? >>

       Mainly in my dreams, but overall, there is usually less work on
new 
parts.  That is partially offset by new failure, as I have had this
month on two 
sets of whippens.  One set was installed and used lightly for 15 years
before 
the jacks began to freeze. The other was last years concert rebuild, so
after 
two were found to be tight, I pulled the whole set off and repinned
them.  
This happened in the dryest part of the calender, and occurred
spontaneously, so 
I don't believe it was humidity.
   It seems I remember having to bend a lot of jack pins in some of the 
Baldwin actions to keep the jack near centered,  I think there must be a
limit on 
how much of that can be done before dependability and durability issues
arise.  
   I'm not afraid of new parts on heavily worked pianos.  Damper felts
every 
couple or four years, back actions every three decades, hammers every
year or 
three if they really want it voiced all the time, etc. Somewhere in
there lies 
the whippen, or whipping if I spend all day on it.  We kept the original

Teflon whippens at Vanderbilt for 26 years. They were fine, but
gradually the 
maintenance costs and worry about things breaking ( like that cool
little tender 
joint?) grew to make new parts a good investment in stress.  That is
sort of a 
specific answer to a general question, mea culpa. 
     At some point, I think I can get a better result, for the same or a

little more cost, with starting over.   


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