Help! I'm regulating dampers on a 1915 Everett grand, and I've never seen this configuration. If you look straight down through the damper guide rail holes, you don't see the damper blocks: they're all located about an inch toward the tail of the piano from vertical! (In side view, looking from bass to treble, the blocks are about an inch to the left of where a plumb bob would drop down from the guide rail holes). I've replaced the damper felt, and as part of my routine, I always square up the damper wires as I polish them. I noticed that they were all angled back about 25 degrees, starting right at the head, in a straight line. I didn't have the piano to investigate with. The first logical thing that came to mind was to do the two traditional bends in the fore-and-aft plane (as well as side-to-side, if needed). This worked fine until I realized the sostenuto tabs were too far from the blade, so they must have been designed to lean toward the keys. The second thing that happened was that the vertical section coming up from the block started to rub on the guide rail! I could accept this geometry if the guide rail holes were angled back as well (although the dampers would move toward you as they lift). I rebushed the guide rail, and all the holes were vertical through it! Before I replaced the felt, everything seemed to work fine. I'm quite comfortable with the left-to-right Z bends; it's the fore-and-aft bends that I need help with. My next guess is to just make one bend toward the tail, and let the end of the wire enter the block at the angle it was apparently designed for. This will put the tabs back toward the blade, and will keep the wire from hitting the guide rail. But it seems so wrong to have the damper wire going through the guide rail at an angle! Don't I need to have at least that part perpendicular to the guide rail in all axes? Something else to check before I take on a job... --Cy-- Cy Shuster, RPT Albuquerque, NM www.shusterpiano.com www.facebook.com/shusterpiano -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20120612/6b82671f/attachment.htm>
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