lesser of touch weight evils...

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi Ric, Jonathon, David, all,

Sorry if I jumped the gun.  I get hit with bouts of enthusiasm at times and
think out loud.  :-)

Well, I have the action home for a few days.  I will shape hammers, do some
repinning, clean & lube, etc., etc.,... do as much of a survey as possible,

Actually, whoever did this rebuilding, did a nice job with what was
available at the time.  Newer style capstans (still at an angle), newer
keytops that may have replaced a bad keytop job, because there is new wood
on the sides of the white keys. During a quick look I realized that many of
the leads are covered by new wood--the only indicator of some of them is
the little drill bit tip hole on the "other side" of the key. Hmm, that 
might make things interesting!

My biggest challenge right now is since I'm still recovering, I'm not quite
up to a whole day's work--it's going to take a little while to get to
everything.

Later,

Barbara Richmond, RPT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ric Brekne" <ricbrek at broadpark.no>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 11:08 AM
Subject: lesser of touch weight evils...
>
> As both David Love and I mentioned, given the limited amount of
> information about the action up to now, there is no real point in
> speculating about doing any particular one thing.  Even familiarness with
> the model and time period does not help beyond being a reference.
> Especially as in this case... someone has done an action job of one sort
> or another.
>
> I have run into many a fine playing action with reasonably high
> mass/inertia levels. If an action is well balanced and finely regulated,
> it will not play like a truck.
>
> Cheers
> RicB
>
>
> Jonathan Finger writes:
>
> What about the overall action ratio?  How will changing the knuckle
> affect this?
>
> I realize the church wants a "good" piano with a "good" action, but what
> do the performers want it to feel like?  It's probably worthwhile to
> have this information to help you head in the right direction.
> The balance weight is very high at > 40g, so you might want to look at
> removing some mass/inertia, which gets rid of the truck feeling,
> especially at pianissimo.  As previously mentioned, you might want to
> try a lighter hammer and less lead before moving knuckles around.
>