Interesting Problems in a Seiler upright

[Clyde Hollinger]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
Dave,

The scary part is to think that if it was okay a month ago, it is
possible that a month from now you'll have to go back and undo
everything you just did.  Don't lose any sleep waiting for it to happen,
though.  <G>

I've had the happy experience of finding the action sloppy on a spinet
with lots of lost motion, adjusting everything to specs, then needing to
undo some of the work several months later because the jacks wouldn't
slip under the hammer butts.  The lady knows it needs humidity control,
but it's one of those families where money seems to be in constant short
supply.

Regards,
Clyde

Piannaman@aol.com wrote:

> Today I went out to service a Seiler model 131(top of the line with
> magnetically assisted action) that is around 3 years old.  The owner
> complained of dampers not working.
>
> When I arrived at his home, I found that the piano was so far out of
> regulation that I felt obliged to look for structural damage in the
> instrument.  I have never seen a piano so far out of whack.  There was
> no cracked plate, no warped keybed(it has a metal frame under the
> keyboard), nothing out of place, no signs of anything broken.  The
> hammers were between 1/4 and 1/2 inch off the rail, and most of them
> blocked against the strings when played with a moderate to hard blow.
> I thought of trying to raise the action bracket bolts(the ones they
> rest on on the keybed) to raise the entire action up a small amount,
> but they were as high as they could go without bending the nose bolts
> upward.
>
> I figured it was a humidity problem that had caused some swelling.
> That's a helluva a lot of swelling, though.  I ended up having to turn
> the capstans down more than one complete turn, then re-regulate the
> let-off and the back checks.  It came out fine, but I am wondering
> why  this happened.  According to the lady of the house, it went from
> good to unplayable in about a month.  It was almost as if someone had
> given a toddler some tools and told him to go play with the action.
>
> Anybody ever seen anything like this in a really high quality
> instrument?
>
> Dave Stahl

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/f0/a6/95/47/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--