<html> Avery - Comments are interspersed - At 12:44 PM 02/03/2002 -0600, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>List, Warning. This may be a fairly long post. Here's the background. Our newer 'D' (1997) went back to the dealership for some work. The extremely high humidity after the flood last summer had affected some things, mainly the damper system... Anyway, the dealer had heard about us having some problems with the piano, so he offered to bring it in and have his techs do some work on it before the festival at no charge to us. Hey, why not? :-) Freed me up to do other things. I've talked to the shop tech and he told me that he'd had to raise the stack some because the hammers weren't hitting correctly. My first question is what effect would that have to how the action would then have to be regulated?</blockquote> Avery - My first question would have been, "What do you mean by not hitting correctly?"   And then, did he raise the entire stack (Bill Garlick hates that term), just the front, or the just the back?   <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>OK, now the problems. I had to pull the action Saturday to do something or other and accidently discovered that a lot of the hammers are now resting on the backchecks. Even to the point of being able to hear a noise when they hit and there's no bounce at all on many of them. Especially from the upper middle, all the way down to the end. Also, if you put your hand on the hammer and slowly press the key, you can feel a slight rub on many of them in that area. And no, it's not the tail that's rubbing. </blockquote> Did the flood affect the hammers enough to swell the felt in that shoulder area? <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>I checked a few things and found that the dip is well over 10mm on the whites, </blockquote> 10mm is almost exact .390".  11mm is .433". Steinway spec for D is .390" but manual states that up to .420" is acceptable tolerance for all models.  Is "well over 10mm as much as 11mm? <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>the hammer blow is at least 2", the drop is way too much and there is plenty of aftertouch, in not too much in some cases. However the basic feel is fairly decent, maybe even on the light side. Almost "dangerously light", as Anton put it.</blockquote> What effect did the humidity have on action centers and key bushings? <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>If I raise the hammer line to where I normally like to have it (around 1 3/4" or so, that's going to seriously increase the aftertouch. Even raising it to 1 7/8" would cause a problem and I don't think I can decrease the dip enough to compensate for that. There's also not enough room to be able to lower the whites any. They're already about as low as they can be.</blockquote> Steinway D hammer blow spec is 1 7/8".  I am not understanding what would prevent you from decreasing dip.  What do you mean about insufficient room to lower naturals, and why would you want to? <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>That brings me back to my first question. Would raising the stack have made these compromises necessary? Especially the excessive hammer blow?</blockquote> Raising the stack would cause excessive hammer blow if he neglected to reestablish the proper hammer line after doing so. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Any suggestions on what to do to correct the problem(s).</blockquote> Have you gone back to the dealer yet to thank him for his free help?  Might be interesting.  Before you jump in with flippers and air tank, at 1997, you are at the tail end of a 5 year warrantee period.  If the technician was correct about the hammers not striking correctly (whatever that means), and it's not reasonably ascribable to the flood, perhaps the problem was there to begin with, and should be covered. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> I haven't had a chance yet to check the backcheck height in relation to letoff. That's 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 problem was not there before the tech raised the stack. Got any comments Horace? Anyone else? I'm going to have to get on it this week, so any quick help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry about the length of this. It just takes a bit to explain all this. I'm also going to send this to the caut list, so sorry about any duplication for some of you. Regards, Avery P.S. At least they corrected some of the problems with the damper lift, even though I don't really like the damping, either.</blockquote> Why not? Best & good luck in a week - David Skolnik </html>