I recently reinstalled the dampers and damper assembly (fresh felt all around) on a Steinway O which I had restrung with a pinblock. I was surprised to find that the damper tray was slightly sprung upwards. That's to say that the tray did not drop down by its own weight but was lifted by some unknown force up through the first 20% of its travel. (The tray return spring is the coil spring over on the bass end, not the leaf spring on the treble end, but this shouldn't make any difference.) The only thing that I can imagine is that the combined total strength of the individual underlever springs is slightly higher than that of the tray return spring. I did not strengthen these springs, although I checked across the set of them for weak ones. In general the strongest were ~30g (measured with the P.K.Neuse leaf spring gage 50-0-50g), though the bass ones were noticeably weaker than the middle section (presumably because the leading in the levers takes over the job of returning the levers). Has anybody seen this before. I haven't. I've taken a week off for tuning and will bet back to the fine damper reg next week. Bill Ballard RPT NH Chapter "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes timeand annoys the pig." Sign on the wall of a college voice teacher's studio.
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