<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Sustain pedal lift ratio</title></head><body> <div>Hi all,</div> <div><br></div> <div>At various times over the years this topic has been discussed on the list. To recap some of my past contributions on this topic, the ratio range which seems to satisfy most pianists is somewhere in the range of 2.5 - 3.5:1. That is, when the sustain pedal travels 2.5 - 3.5 mm for every 1 mm of damper lift.</div> <div><br></div> <div>The 1975 Baldwin SD-10 we rebuilt had an original lift ratio of 2.0:1. A Yamaha C3 I measured at the time had 2.5:1. While a Grotrian 275 concert grand had around 5.0:1. When we rebuilt the Grotrian, and the Baldwin for the first time, we had complaints about the damper lift of both pianos. The Grotrian was deemed too hard to control while the complaint of the Baldwin was that the dampers were too noisy when the damper pedal was released. We changed the leverage ratio of both pianos to 2.5:1 and haven't had a complaint since.</div> <div><br></div> <div>My reason for sending this post today is that yesterday I tuned the Grotrian for a recording session, and while there, I got out the digital to show how we changed the Grotrian's damper lift ratio. Some on the list had expressed an interest in seeing the detail of this conversion, but from memory I hadn't gotten around to taking an image. Here's the image</div> <div><br></div> <div><img src="cid:a0624080dc1794c8473cb@[192.168.0.7].1.0"></div> <div><br></div> <div>I've greyscaled it to take up less space.</div> <div><br></div> <div>The original lift lever was a single piece straight lever. You can see where the hinge was located just behind the bass-side lyre support strut.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Ron O.</div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> <div><font face="Times New Roman" size="+1" color="#0000FF"><b>OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY</b></font></div> <div><font color="#000000"><i>   </i></font><font color="#0000FF"><i>Grand Piano Manufacturers</i></font><font color="#000000"><br> _______________________</font></div> <div><font size="-2" color="#000000"><br> </font><font color="#000000">Web http://overspianos.com.au</font></div> <div><font color="#000000">mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au<br> _______________________</font></div> </body> </html>