Re: [pianotech] 1984 Steinway D

[Joseph Garrett]

Regi,

The hammers look like Ronsens.(with sapele moulding)  "..bright"? That would surprise me, unless they were lacquered. If that's the case then several douses with acetone and flush the lacquer down. The leading pattern is excessive imo. I'd experiment with pinning and then some lead removal if the correct pinning doesn't do the job of getting dynamics back.

Best,

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: Regi Hedahl
Sent: Mar 19, 2015 7:12 AM
To: pian...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [pianotech] 1984 Steinway D

There indeed was a bunch of loose hammer flange pins so I went through and re-pinned those. However, the action is still very light and all the bass notes will bottom out even with a 48 gram weight. That said, I suspect that these hammers are not original and probably lighter weight than what was originally on the piano. Are these Ronsen hammers? They are quite bright sounding and the piano is in a small 15' x 15' room.

Here' a photo of some of the keysticks taken out to see the lead weights.

Here's a close up photo of a keystick. It doesn't seem like these keysticks have hardwood sole plates.

Regi Hedahl

On Monday, March 9, 2015 at 11:20:32 AM UTC-5, ed foote wrote:

Greetings,
   This is the year that Steinway went back to cloth bushings, and  I would suspect that the entire action has pinning that is wildly erratic.  In order of importance, I would check the hammer shanks, repetitions, jacks, whippens.   In terms of tone, firmness of  hammershank pinning matters.  In terms of repetition speed, the repetition pinning is critical.  Jacks will move faster than humans can play them, even at 4 grams of resistance, if the spring is properly strong, (which depends on the shank pinning).  Erratic pinning means not only erratic resistance, but also erratic springs, which means erratic thresholds to pp escapement.  

   You are also listening to a 30 year old soundboard.  Sometimes this begins to show as weakness in tone and sustain in the fifth octave.  The lack can be ameliorated by balancing the piano's bass to whatever you can get the fifth octave to do, so don't be scared of reducing the power of the lower half of the keyboard. With stock Steinway hammers, this often entails putting a couple of needles in from the 10:00 o'clock and 3:00 o'clock positions, going straight horizontally into the core of the hammer.  It has little effect on the attack, but will reduce the power.  

   Also critical, and often the source of dramatic improvement is to insure that the sole plates of the keys, where the balance rail hole is located, are no more that 4 mm thick.  
There is a long list of other things, but without taking the action out and apart, the above will give you some place to start.
Regards,

Ed Foote RPT

Captain of the Tool Police
Squares R I
gpianoworks.com