Greetings All, Over the last several months I have had the opportunity to experiment on about 10 Samick or D.H.Baldwin actions to reduce many of the obnoxious noises. Several solutions have been found that may be of help. #1. This procedure will involve a full days and a halfs work. a. Number and remove all Wippens. b. Remove jack button felt, and replace with Baldwin unwoven button felt. the factory original is a dense woven product that also has glue that wicked into the material to about 50% of its thickness. Causing it to clack against the spoon. c. Remove the drop button leather and replace with a quality buck skin. This is really noticable on instruments that are set with a wide drop. d. Remove the jack height button felt. I cut my own punchings from a strip of vertical spring rail felt. A big improvement. All gluing operations was done with hot hide glue. Reinstall and align wippens. regulate action, Check jack height and position carefully. For jack height I like to be able to feel the jack just kiss the knuckle on the return. but go back positively to the spoon on a slow release. The action turned out to be as quiet and responsive as any of the Japanese pianos. An expensive fix but well worth the effort. #2 Take some masking tape and mark the position off the action brackets. Remove the hammer rail. Make a chop stick neddling tool with a hammer shank leaving about 2" of neddle exposed. You now have room to raise the wippens so that you will have plenty of room to neddle the felt buttons. Press the neddle laterally through the felt about 1/32" from the surface, about 6 insertions seem to do the trick. reregulate the jack position. If you have sucessfully softened the felt the jack line will move forward about 1/16" or more. About 2 Hrs work. If the drop screw leather is hard replace with buck skin, or Yamaha quality synthetic material. (can't remember the name) Use hot glue for best results. I have done some experiments with both steam and alcohol and water combinations. but they did not yield the results as the above. Hope this is of some help. Regards Roger
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC