Relocating capstans

Thomas D. Seay, III t.seay@mail.utexas.edu
Thu, 31 Aug 1995 13:22:21 -0500


Greetings and hallucinations:

Our school has a Steinway B from the 1980's  which has terrible
downweight/upweight problems. The keys in the bass are full of leads, and
we are still getting downweight between 65-70 grams in that section with
barely any upweight at all, improving to 60 grams in the treble with
marginal upweight.

Upon examining things, we discovered that the capstan on note #1 is hitting
the heel of the capstan almost at the front of the heel instead of in the
middle, tapering to almost normal on note #88. We tried changing out
wippens with several different styles from our kit, but the one which
worked the best was the original teflon wippen.

My question is:

How should I relocate the capstans to their proper position and is this
something any of you routinely do in cases like this? Any and all help or
suggestions would be gratefully appreciated, including methods of plugging
original holes, alternative woods to sugar pine (if it's not available),
degree of difficulty,  etc.

You may post to the group or e-mail me privately if you prefer at :
t.seay@mail.utexas.edu

Many thanks!

Tom Seay
t.seay@mail.utexas.edu
The University of Texas at Austin








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