Mother goose string leveler

[William Ballard]

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At 10:13 PM -0400 9/12/05, Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote:
>Anybody else discover this little Jem?

Previous to what I now do (which is nearly twenty years old), I used 
to use one of the drill guide blocks from the upright hammer 
hand-boring jig, the half-hole one (being the thinner of the two 
guide blocks).

But then I noticed that getting the three strings to contact the 
block still wouldn't guarantee the same hammer-to-string contact when 
you went from standard keyboard position to Una Corda. The only thing 
worse for a UC sound than un-level strings is hardener at the strike 
point.

So the final step in hammer re-shaping is to confirm that the hammer 
strike surfaces are level and square, usually with a straight edge 
sitting on the hammer flanges, but always being certain that what 
you're sighting across is the strike surface instead of slightly over 
the hill from it (one side or the other). I'd already figured out 
that it doesn't take to many mils of error here to turn one string 
into an audibly "open" one, all the more so with harder felt than 
softer. Anyone who has run across Don Mannino's "speed bumps" has 
noticed this.

With the hammer strike surfaces confirmed to be level and square, I 
check open strings, first in the standard position and then the UC 
for each note. If I hear open strings in the standard position, I 
make a mental note on the beach of my brain of the exact pattern 
LH/C/RH and see what  happens to that pattern in the UC (remembering 
off course that the LH string is out of the picture). If the open 
string pattern for the C/RH strings stays the same, it's the strings 
which aren't level. If the C/RH string pattern equals what the LH/C 
pattern was, then my strike surface leveling wasn't good enough. If 
the UC C/RH pattern bears no resemblance to either the standard 
position LH/C or C/RH, then the level at both the strings and the 
strike surface are out to lunch. But with good hammer re-shaping, 
it'll rarely be anything except the fist scenario (ie., the open 
string pattern has stayed with the strings instead of moved with the 
hammer).

>I've noticed it is important to put the device as close to the 
>striking spot on the string for accuracy as  it is level strings at 
>the hammer strike point

I noticed that too, with a dial indicator under the strings and 
sampling the string level at various points approaching the actual 
strike point.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"When writing a mental note, first procure a mental piece of paper"
     ............mental graffitti
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