<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>S & S 'D' Problems</title></head><body> <div>List,</div> <div><br></div> <div>Warning. This may be a fairly long post. Here's the background.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Our newer 'D' (1997) went back to the dealership for some work. The</div> <div>extremely high humidity after the flood last summer had affected some</div> <div>things, mainly the damper system. I had thought about completely</div> <div>re-regulating it this summer but because the music desk was so tight it</div> <div>almost took Godzilla to get it out, I decided to wait and see if things</div> <div>would return to some semblance of normal</div> <div>after it started drying out. They mostly did, including the music desk</div> <div>problem. It's fine now.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Anyway, the dealer had heard about us having some problems with the</div> <div>piano, so he offered to bring it in and have his techs do some work on</div> <div>it before the festival at no charge to us. Hey, why not? :-) Freed me</div> <div>up to do other things.</div> <div><br></div> <div>I've talked to the shop tech and he told me that he'd had to raise the</div> <div>stack some because the hammers weren't hitting correctly. My first</div> <div>question is what effect would that have to how the action would then</div> <div>have to be regulated?</div> <div><br></div> <div>OK, now the problems. I had to pull the action Saturday to do something</div> <div>or other and accidently discovered that a lot of the hammers are now</div> <div>resting on the backchecks. Even to the point of being able to hear a</div> <div>noise when they hit and there's no bounce at all on many of them.</div> <div>Especially from the upper middle, all the way down to the end. Also, if</div> <div>you put your hand on the hammer and slowly press the key, you can feel a</div> <div>slight rub on many of them in that area. And no, it's not the tail that's rubbing. :-) If the hammer should happen to come back too hard, it could</div> <div>cause it to be caught by the backcheck. That happened on one note with</div> <div>Angela Chang (Janina Fialkowska's substitute). I corrected a few by</div> <div>changing the angle of the backcheck just a little and got through the</div> <div>concert OK.</div> <div><br></div> <div>I checked a few things and found that the dip is well over 10mm on the</div> <div>whites, the hammer blow is at least 2", the drop is way too much and</div> <div>there is plenty of aftertouch, in not<i> too</i> much in some cases. However</div> <div>the basic feel is fairly decent, maybe even on the light side. Almost "dangerously light", as Anton put it.</div> <div><br></div> <div>If I raise the hammer line to where I normally like to have it (around</div> <div>1 3/4" or so, that's going to seriously increase the aftertouch. Even</div> <div>raising it to 1 7/8" would cause a problem and I don't think I can</div> <div>decrease the dip enough to compensate for that. There's also not enough</div> <div>room to be able to lower the whites any. They're already about as low as</div> <div>they can be.</div> <div><br></div> <div>That brings me back to my first question. Would raising the stack have</div> <div>made these compromises necessary? Especially the excessive hammer blow?</div> <div><br></div> <div>Any suggestions on what to do to correct the problem(s). I haven't had</div> <div>a chance yet to check the backcheck height in relation to letoff. That's</div> <div>one possibility but I'm not quite ready to jump in and start lowering backchecks just yet, until I know what's really happening here. The</div> <div>problem was not there before the tech raised the stack.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Got any comments Horace? Anyone else? I'm going to have to get on it</div> <div>this week, so any quick help would be greatly appreciated.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Sorry about the length of this. It just takes a bit to explain all this.</div> <div>I'm also going to send this to the caut list, so sorry about any</div> <div>duplication for some of you.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Regards,</div> <div>Avery</div> <div><br></div> <div>P.S. At least they corrected some of the problems with the damper lift,</div> <div>even though I don't really like the damping, either.</div> </body> </html>