[pianotech] Incremental Upright Regulation

[David Ilvedson]

If you have 45 minutes, you can't bog down with perfection, i.e. "struggled with let-off".  You are only making it better.   BEFORE ANYTHING MAKE SURE THE DAMPERS ARE NOT RAISING EARLY WITH THE KEY.   Blow distance, lost motion (this can really be as fast as getting an idea how much you need to turn after a couple capstans and then just going through and turning each capstan the same...if you are slowly playing the key to see if the jack gets back under you will get nowhere in 45 minutes), quick key level to take care of worse offenders...raise the low ones, forget turning the punching at this time, touch up lost motion which will be mean lower some slightly (i.e. run your hands along the back of the keys and adjust hammers that move.  Do a couple let-off adjustments and then turn them all the same amount.   Roughing in the backchecks can make a big difference.  

IMHO I think spending a lot of time on one octave is not the way to go.   

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA  94044

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Floyd Gadd" <fg at floydgadd.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Received: 1/21/2010 9:51:36 PM
Subject: [pianotech] Incremental Upright Regulation


>List,
>I usually consider a basic tuning to be a 90 minute call, since in our Manitoba climate, 
>even the pianos I tune annually seem to need some pitch adjustment before I can 
>fine tune.  Today I ran into an exception--a piano I had pitch raised and followed up 
>a month later last winter.  Today's tuning took 45 minutes.
>Since the customer rather likes his piano, but his partner is suggesting they should 
>have a different one, I decided to use my remaining time to do something about its 
>rather unfortunate state of regulation.  I focused on the first octave above the 
>tenor break (B2-B3), refining the key leveling, increasing the dip to 10 mm, setting 
>the letoff, adjusting hammer blow to 1 3/4 inches by shimming behind the hammer 
>rest rail felt (just the one octave), taking up lost motion and setting the checking.  I 
>didn't get around to adjusting damper timing.  Since the customer left the house 
>shortly after I started tuning, I called him later, explaining what I'd done.  I let him 
>know that if having that octave out of sync with the rest of the piano was a 
>problem, I could easily pull the shims and readjust the capstans to make things more 
>consistent.  He was happy, however, to check out  the results of the work, and to 
>consider more work next time.
>Having read Bill Gagnon's article on the full service tuning appointment in the 
>January journal, and Barbara Richmond's contribution a few months back, I'm 
>interested to know how others on this list might be facing the task of bring a piano 
>that is badly out of regulation back to where it needs to be . . . in 30 minute 
>installments.  
>It occurred to me as I struggled to set let-off that a useful "first installment" in the 
>whole process might be sliding out the let-off rail, steaming/ironing the punchings, 
>then quickly setting let-off for the whole scale.  I've figured out a method, based on 
>Spurlock's article in the Tech Exam Source Book, of referencing letoff to the bottom 
>of the string cut, so that my work won't be undone when I get around to reshaping 
>the hammers.  The only hesitation I have with this approach is the fact that the 
>customer doesn't see really noticeable improvement in the feel of the piano from this 
>first installment, and noticeable change is a powerful selling tool for future work.
>Comments?
>Floyd Gadd
>Manitoba Chapter