Hi Paul, Check the action ratio too. Most of the times I see capstans that were moved forward instead of back. It makes me wonder if they were moved forward, to obtain an advantage, then someone moved them back and filled the holes. (I've seen that a bunch) I've moved at least 10 sets back to the original location because a former tech was trying to gain an advantage for power, etc. but ended up with a dip of .450 or more, and a very narrow range of regulation possible. IOW, you basically had to have the specs way out of whack to make the thing work! In this situation what I generally do is experiment with two keys, a sharp and natural. Once you find the spot where the specs and function are optimal, then you can better decide what to do with the rest of them. IMO, most of the time the manufacturer wasn't far off, but I've indeed tweaked things, moved capstans, and/or done other things until I liked it. Good luck! Jim From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Paul T Williams Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 12:47 PM To: CAUTlist Subject: [CAUT] Strange capstan reconfiguration. Hi All, I pulled an action from one of our piano faculty's Steinway B's yesterday since it's just "not working" right. Besides the standard hammer reshaping, rebusing the keys, regulation issues etc., I found that the capstans had been moved BACK some 7mm back and then turbo Renner wippens installed. I'm wondering why? Wouldn't moving capstans back make the action heavier? To "fix" this, would the turbo wippens make up for this in a way. Why mess with what was there? This is a Steinway B from the 20's. I failed to check the geometry "line" before moving the action to my shop. Why, you might ask? Our elevator died and will not be fixed until mid-June, and the Special Olympics will be here in July, so I hope they'll be on time for the fix. I had to take the stack down the stairs on one trip and then the keyboard on a second trip. What fun this is! I'll soon check out the geometry line next week and put them back together, but want to get onto the key rebusing project soon. All else is "normal". It plays like a truck, but I found the blow distance at 1 -7/8" instead of 1-3/4" and the jacks are waaay too far under the jacks, so that will help a bunch fixing that. The key height and dip are perfect. What is going on with the capstan reconfiguration? All thoughts welcome. Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100424/6299d3f0/attachment-0001.htm>
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