Patrick,
Anyone can make a jig. You might take the hammer travel measurements and recreate them on a bench. You could allow for trip on the let off with some kind of additional piece for the jig.
I can imagine a base with an upright that fixes to the action brackets to recreate the measurements of the piano.
"We have done this with grand actions for years and achieve rather helpful regulations. Anything you do that makes it easy for you is great: maybe you will continue to informed the rest of us.
William
William,
Thanks for the reply, and thanks for the vote of confidence. I can imagine the thing too--it so far has played me for a fool. What I imagine is basically a mock up of the place where the action goes, but one that will be adjustable for different actions. The plexiglass I remember seeing in that photo was basically used to copy the string marks in the existing damper felt from the back, like in dry-erase or something, so the heads could be lined up with them. I'm not too overly concerned about replication the exact blow distance, I've got other ways of dealing with that. It's mostly alignment I am concerned with, it's so tedious in a regular action, in a spinet it just becomes unbearable.
You are exactly right, about grand actions; that is exactly what my goal is. A good bench regulation that only needs tweaking when you put it back in. I tune a lot of spinets whose owners would probably rather pay to have them regulated than buy a new piano. I just need to come up with a method that will be enjoyable to me (at least a little). And it has to give results I feel good about, not leave me saying "Well, it is just a drop action."
Patrick
PS, I'm really more interested in the question about backchecks: is it OK to assume on any action that the top of the back check should line up exactly with the top of the back catch?
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