faster whippen - Fandrich

[Cy Shuster]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Delacour" <JD at Pianomaker.co.uk>
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: faster whippen - Fandrich


> At 12:07 pm -0600 25/8/06, Cy Shuster wrote:
>
>>The action does play beautifully, with the feeling of connection between 
>>keys and hammers.  This early model needed a downweight of almost 60 grams 
>>to play well.  I don't know what the current specs are.
>
> Having just looked at the design, I would say your touch weight was due to 
> compression and/or wear of the butt cushion and the resulting reduction of 
> the distance from fly to hammer-centre.  By the look of it this 
> deregulation will happen quite fast.  Too much pressure from the butt 
> spring (spring-rail spring) will also affect the touch weight 
> significantly.
>
> JD

John, you may be right about the wear, but also the first spec of the 
regulation is to set downweight at 59g, by adjusting the hammer return 
springs.  So that's the spec when new, too.  I tried setting it lighter, but 
then the catcher would squeak against the backcheck sometimes when the 
hammer is first moving towards the strings.

Another interesting feature is the una corda shift.  Since there's no lost 
motion (shanks rest above the hammer rest rail, like a grand), the hammers 
are pushed closer to the strings by simply lifting the backs of the keys, 
with a piece of wood like a damper tray underneath them.  So to set key 
height, you simply turn a wing nut on the threaded rod connecting the pedal 
rod to the tray.  Very convenient!

--Cy--