<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">In a message dated 12/20/04 12:13:06 = AM 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">I would submit that if the = jack rail was causing key travel to stop as 12 - 20 mm from the front rail cushions, then you'd have one whale of a lot of broken jacks. The first time you play a bit hard you the jack centers would be so stressed that jacks would easily break there.  = I mentioned something similiar with the damper wires earlier on...   Anything like this being responsible for stopping key travel in midair as it were would have to be able to handle the stress of hard play as well... or parts will break. Keith is right about one thing tho.... whatever the problem is it will be painfully obvious when first noticed.</BLOCKQUOTE> Ric, David, The more I think about it, the more I doubt that it's the jack stop rail= .  As Ric says, that would not account for the ridiculous amount of dip= , and would cause jack breakage.   The more I think about this--and it's been far too much in recent days--= the more I'm thinking that it's either capstan position as Jon Page suggeste= d, or a really poorly assembled piano, or both. There is not much damper pedal travel on this piano, and the dampers don= 't lift high enough off the strings with use of pedal or with key stroke. &n= bsp;I will check damper stop rail, but that still doesn't account for the ke= ydip.   Perhaps the balance rail was positioned too far back towards the action = when the piano was assembled...?  Quality control at that factory in th= ose days was not optimal, so nothing would surprise me here!  Nor would= it surprise me if the problem was something terribly obvious. I'm gonna go play with my action model. Dave Stahl Original post: >>I've got some regulation problems on a 50 inch Mason upright fro= m the 70s.  I've worked on other Aeolian uprights of that vintage, and = 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 use= d).  There was a huge gap between the bottom of the key and the punchin= g when the key was depressed.  This led to hammers blocking, bobbling, = and a feel that could only be described as spongy.    At my last visit, I added punchings, and improved the feel somewhat, but= some of the bobbling is still there.  I also had to increase letoff di= stance in some areas of the keyboard an unacceptable amount to get it to wor= k without hammers blocking against strings. I think that the main problem is that the key height is too great. &nbsp= ;It was somewhere around 70mm, though I forgot to write it down.  More = precise measurements are necessary, and they will be forthcoming after my ne= xt visit there in January.  Blow distance is at 1 7/8(the only thing in= the piano that seems at spec...:-), but it doesn't seem to be enough. I tried lowering the key height on a few sample keys by removing balance= rail punchings, but there was nowhere near enough aftertouch.  Should = I try increasing blow distance to 2 inches or more?  Any ideas??? &nbsp= ;Haaalp??    Any input is welcome, Dave Stahl >> </HTML>