New Wurlitzers

[Roger Jolly]

Hi Avery, 
         They have made great strides in the last year. Soft felt on the
jack spoon buttons, click gone. Better quality drop button leather, click
gone.
Better quality knuckles, click gone. They have finally figured out what the
wip assist springs do, and are now regulating them. I'm still lobbying for
the damper timing.  As a fast fix just give the lifter spoons a tweek
upwards, usually this will time them correctly and make the action feel
100% better.
 I have built a special gig that is screw adjustable that fits under the
under levers to get them all perfectly level this I set so the lever
capstan screw is in the mid position and 1/16" of play. To get this to
happen I usually find that I have to trim some length off the bottom of
some of the damper wires.
The next step, I place the action on the bench and readjust the jig to be
1/8" higher than the lifter felt, place the jig back in the piano and set
the spoons, this proceedure will give you perfect damper lift time.
Remember to reset the capstans by blinking the pedal. A very nice budget
piano, that gives a greaat bang for the buck.  The C173 is based on the R
scale, and if it is preped well is one of the best value for money buys in
the industry.
Glad you like the changes.
Regards Roger. 




At 10:05 AM 17/08/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi everybody,
>
>   I'm back from vacation :-( and from tuning for a large sale in the Civic
>Center for a Baldwin dealer in Beaumont. :-) Early starting and late
>stopping. The dealer treated me great though: put me up in a nice Holiday
>Inn, paid for some meals, gave me extra pay above what my actual bill was
>and still wantsme
>to come back whenever I have a day or two to work. All in all, a great dealer
>to work for. They even give a 10 yr. warranty on most of their used
>instruments. He stands behind the instrument and the work.
>   Way too many pianos (app. 100) for one person to tune in the time
>available but I managed to get all the grands and a few of the verticals
>tuned. Thought some of you might be interested in comments on the new
>Wurlitzer grands made
>by Samick for Baldwin.
>   I haven't had much experience with Samicks but from what I have had,
>these Wurlitzers are an improvement. Especially in tone. I *think* the
>hammers are from Baldwin (red underfelt) and are a lot softer than the ones
>Samicks usually  have. So the basic tone is much improved. Even the very
>small ones don't sound too bad and the ones over 5' sound fairly good. Some
>*almost* too soft.
>   Except for having to do pitch raises on them all, the biggest problem
>they seem to consistently have is very poor damper regulation. They all had
>notes, from the trichord section on down, which did not dampen well at all.
>The dampers would twist as they came out of the strings and some were bent
>to one side or the other enough that a string would ring through. So I
>spent several hours working on dampers instead of tuning.
>   The only other problem I noticed was that a tuning pin or two in the
>tenor area on one piano was so close to the stretcher wood that even my
>rounded
>head tip mashed into the wood a little as I tried to turn the pin.
>   All could use a thorough prepping of course, but if/when these problems
>are corrected, they might have a fairly decent low-cost grand if other
>problems don't surface with use and age.
>   Quite a way to end my vacation, but at least it got me back into a work
>mode to get ready for school to start next week.
>
>Regards,
>Avery
>
>___________________________
>Avery Todd, RPT
>Moores School of Music                  (__)
>University of Houston                   (oo)        Mathematical Cow
>Houston, TX 77204-4893         /---------\/     (Developer of cow-culus)
>713-743-3226                  / | x=a(b)||
>713-743-3226                 *  ||------||
>atodd@uh.edu                    ~~      ~~
>http://www.music.uh.edu/ 
>
>
>
Roger Jolly
Baldwin Yamaha Piano Centre
Saskatoon and Regina
Saskatchewan, Canada.
306-665-0213
Fax 652-0505