<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">In a message dated 12/18/04 1:17:08 P= M Pacific Standard Time, Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Piannaman@aol.com wrote: > Salutations, > > I've got some regulation problems on a 50 inch Mason upright from t= he > 70s.  I've worked on other Aeolian uprights of that vintage, a= nd some > of them have the same problem.   > > The initial problem was that the keys weren't bottoming out on > punchings.  It seems that it's been that way since new(though = they > bought it used).  There was a huge gap between the bottom of t= he key > and the punching when the key was depressed.  This led to hamm= ers > blocking, bobbling, and a feel that could only be described as spon= gy. I am not sure I understand here.... what is inhibiting the keys from bottoming out ?  Is there a stop rail at the back of the keys ? Is = there something about the regulation of the action itself that meets a stop rail before the keys bottom out ? You should be able to get a 9-11 mm dip range with no problems whatsover= (outside of the obvious general regulation consequences of too deep or too shallow a key dip).Bottoming out should be no problem in this range. If key height is way too high, then the bottoms of the keys will show over the keyslip rail yes.... I have a hard time seeing that anyone would set them so high as to cause them to not bottom out... but who kno= ws. Off the top of my head, from your discription so far it sounds like perhaps the dampers are hitting the stop rail before the key gets a chance to reach bottom. That would explain the spongeyness, and could account for bobbling. But if you force the key down you should be able to stress the damper wires enough to hit bottom... so I am just guessing.  Something, however, must be stoping the keys from hittin= g bottom and you need to find out what that something is. Check all your regulation points first,  get all of those within acceptable tolererances before anything else. Cheers RicB </BLOCKQUOTE> Ric, I don't know if it's even posssible.  I'm convinced the geometry is= totally screwed up, and I need to figure out why and where. The key dip before I changed the punchings and added cardboard punchings= was anywhere between 12mm and 20mm depending on how hard you pushed.  = In other words, it was not governed by the front rail punchings, rather by h= ow hard you pushed and forced the capstan to the wippen, jack to hammer butt= , hammer to string.  Even then, the keys were not touching the punching= .  I think that this piano was built in the dying days of Aeolian, and = that they forgot to check things, like keydip.  It is weird.  And = the thing has been tuned regularly since new, judging by all of the pencil m= arks on the plate. Thanks for the input, Dave </HTML>