<html> I think sooner or later someone will market the hardware to place the S&S sostenuto rod onto the belly rail where it is supposed to be, avoiding its removal. That could either be the first step in complete action changing (eliminating the tubular action rails) or supplied with the retrofit kit. One of these days . . . Jon Page At 12:11 AM 07/29/2000 -0500, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite cite>>sandra cooper wrote: >> >> Herb. I recently worked on a Steinway B with the QRS system in it . The >> Sostenuto mechanism had been removed. I don't much care for that, but it >> may be what you have to do. What do the people at QRS say to do?Sandra >> Cooper RPT >> ________________________________________________________________ > > >Just wondering . . . would someone who needs a QRS system even need a >sostenuto mechanism?  A monkey, maybe . . . > >Rヾney Pritchett Well, that's probably a realistic attitude... but. Putting the real world on hold for a moment and centering on how I think it OUGHT to be, I'd rather not compromise, negate, render inoperative, sabotage, cripple, hobble, or butcher the existing pedal function to put in a player mechanism. Someone might, against all odds, occasionally want to actually play the thing manually (!) as if it were a real instrument. I still distinctly recall the horror I felt reading the section of the old Pianocorder installation manual where it suggested adding a booster spring under the damper lever arm to float the dampers enough that the poorly engineered solenoid system could lift them, even though the booster spring made the dampers nearly entirely non functional. The real fix was, of course, not to butcher the existing damper system down to accommodate the driver, but rather to re engineer the solenoid and driver circuitry to meet the power requirements of the damper system. That didn't happen for a long time. Power and stroke length isn't the problem any more with the current (sorry) electronic player systems, but rather physical space requirements. The damper pedal can be accommodated to some degree, though the leverage moments and throw proportions are often compromised to the point that "working" is only relative to "not working at all", rather than to "working reasonably correctly". The possibility of maintaining sustenuto function was apparently written off early in the design process, and only seems to have been reconsidered as a last minute concession just before the shipping packaging was worked out. From what I've seen, the shipping packaging is terrific, but the sustenuto still won't work with the supplied options. The installer has to work out the moments and throw proportions, figure out how the hardware will fit in the available space, fabricate the parts necessary to make it work, install it and, last but not least, make it work. Plan on spending the better part of a day on just the sustenuto if you have the piano in the shop where all your tools and parts are readily available. If you are retrofitting a working sustenuto linkage into an existing installation in a customer's living room, plan on charging them a day and a half, or two day's wages for your trouble. For that, you have to make it work. Or you could just pull the sustenuto, dummy the middle pedal, and pretend that's the way it's supposed to be. Nah, this isn't a sore point. What gave you that idea? Ron N </blockquote> <div>Jon Page,   piano technician</div> <div>Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass.</div> <div><a href="mailto:jonpage@mediaone.net"= EUDORA=AUTOURL>mailto:jonpage@mediaone.net</a></div> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ </html>