Steinway regulation

[Jon Page]

Years ago while tuning a fairly new Yamaha grand, I noticed the shanks
resting on the rest felt and no after touch. Obviously the piano had been
played without attention. As a courtesy I raised the shanks to bring the
hammers to the 'proper' height and it played like a responsive grand again.

The customer sat down and 'hated' it. What did I do to the touch? It plays like
one of those pianos in a store, not _my_piano. I lowered the shanks back down
and he was once again happy with the touch. To each his own.

The next time he called, I referred him to a tuner, that's all he needed.

After touch is a personal preference. You can get it from the hammer
almost bobbling to the jack hitting the player in the chin.   :-)

The greater the after touch, the less time the finger is in control of the key.
If you give an eighth on an inch to this follow through, that only leaves one
quarter of an inch for delivery.  If you can extend the delivery time, dynamic
control will increase.

I used to like the feel of deep after touch and divided the keystroke into 
three
segments. The first eighth of an inch the damper lifted, the second eighth
the hammer got to the string, the third eighth was after touch.  Then I got 
into
squeezing the most out of the action and after touch lost. It is needed for
follow through but I don't approach it as a setting but rather a by product.
If everything works properly, it's there automatically.

Come to think of it, I do use after touch in regards to a setting. When giving
a grand a top action regulation, I set the hammer height to result in a 
sufficient
follow through.

Regards,

Jon Page


At 08:02 PM 04/12/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>List,
>         Thank you for your continued discussion of this issue.  When I 
> changed the
>regulation to a deeper dip and longer blow (yes, 1 7/8"), I also put
>let-off closer than where it had been.  I also like let-off to be as close
>as possible, but in my efforts to get the piano back to it's original
>"inviting" state, I also undid the close let-off ("generous" might be the
>wrong word, but definitely more than 1/16")so that adequate after-touch
>could be achieved without cranking the capstans even higher.  I don't think
>at this point the aftertouch is excessive, merely what was necessary to
>make the pianist happy.  I would invite your ideas of what an acceptable
>range of after-touch is - .045-.060?  I believe what attracted the pianist
>to this piano (and the way it had been regulated) was "some form of
>finesse" (another way of saying "inviting") more than other considerations.
>  I went into this knowing that I was trying to fix something that wasn't
>broken - a learning experience it has definitely turned out to be.
>
>  My intent wasn't to
> >get into design issues, but just to observe from a practical point of
> >view that the likely cause of the annoying problems - repetition being
> >iffy and the jack hitting something, maybe the flange - was the excess
> >aftertouch, based on what Jeff reported.
> >       If the action regulated well with .39 dip and, I assume, about 1 7/8
> >blow, as Jeff stated (he didn't say how much blow), then it should
> >regulate reasonably well with .375 dip and 1 5/8 to 1 3/4 blow, at least
> >in my experience, with the caveat that aftertouch might be less than I'd
> >like and check distance might need to be tweaked on the far side. And if
> >that's what the customer wants, more power to him (he'll need it to get
> >the volume, but maybe he doesn't want volume so much as some form of
> >finesse). On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine a pianist wanting
> >greater than 1/16 letoff.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Fred Sturm
> >University of New Mexico
> >
> >Jon Page wrote:
> >>
> >> If you really want to start analyzing the key stroke, the location of the
> >> capstan
> >> on the key will determine where the jack will end up at the end of the key
> >> stroke
> >> with a given dip, hammer length & blow parameters.
> >
> >
>Jeff Stickney, RPT
>University of Montana
>jpage@selway.umt.edu

Jon Page,   piano technician
Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass.
mailto:jonpage@mediaone.net
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