Hail and fare well, was Re: Bridge Pins & Nega Bearing

[Porritt, David]

Ron:

I was working on an "L" here with a bad section in the "killer octave"
that I wanted to help.  I used vice grips to find where I'd like to put
some weight and they really helped.  Unfortunately, where the weights
need to go I can't get a drill because of the keybed extension and
crossblock.  

Any bright ideas???

dave

David M. Porritt
dporritt at smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Nossaman
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2006 8:14 PM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Hail and fare well, was Re: Bridge Pins & Nega Bearing


>   Yes & now your'e in Witchita with Twisters a headin your way.
>   I'll have the earthquakes please.
>   Dale

Ah yes, but we can watch 'em go by without actually 
participating - unlike with hurricanes and earthquakes. Once 
again, we've missed being sucked up into the sky for another day.

Speaking of natural disasters, I left this morning in the 
first pounding hailstorm of the day to try to make the honking 
low tenor and high bass in a relatively new Baldwin vertical 
tolerable for the owner. A nasty low tenor in this piano. To 
antagonize an already under ribbed soundboard and under 
extended tenor bridge, they actually hung that low tenor on a 
cantilever. I couldn't believe it. At least there were some 
wrapped strings down there, or it likely would have been even 
worse. I had brought a selection of brass weights to see how 
far I could get with the mass loading my previous vise grip 
tests had indicated was worth a try. With both the low tenor, 
and the entire bass bridge on cantilevers, attaching the 
weights to the back side of the soundboard wasn't as practical 
as I'd have liked. But then, it's a vertical, right? Drilling 
between strings on the bridge face, I screwed on different 
combinations until I ended up with a 165g weight to the low 
tenor, and a 150g weight to the high bass. It looked really 
stupid, but it helped. This was the ugliest fix with the least 
ugly sound I could make with what I had, so I stopped there 
and did the 50 cent pitch raise and tuning. Yea, I know. Why 
didn't I do the pitch raise the first trip so it would be 
settled down some by now. Probably because I'm an idiot, as it 
was certainly obvious on this trip what I should have done the 
first time. It's always SO helpful to notice the obvious after 
the fact... Oh well, I hope she likes it.

Ron N