Genuine Steinway Action Rails Split

Ron Nossaman RNossaman@cox.net
Fri Jul 12 12:17 MDT 2002


>     Well....that's a good question.
>     If it doesn't work at all and you have to throw out the rail and start
>over, that's definately not accurate enough.
>     If you put it together, and it takes two miserable days to align
>everything and it took 300 pieces of traveling paper, that's not accurate
>enough.

Exactly, and when this is the case, wherein lies the inaccuracy? Is it the 
piano, the rail(s), or all of the above that is (are) at fault? Improving 
the fit by accurate rail drilling, without changing the plate and bridges, 
would mean that the rails should be custom drilled to accurately reflect 
the inconsistencies of the string spacing at the strike line in the piano. 
But then the hammers would look uneven when the shanks were traveled well. 
I don't know if they are still doing it, but Steinway's answer to this used 
to be to space the hammers uniformly at rest, then travel them in whatever 
direction was necessary to make them hit the strings. Others might, or 
might not agree with this approach. It depends on where you want your 
accuracy to be measured. My point is that Del's criteria for alignment is 
right on the money, but depends on the piano being reasonably accurate. In 
the real world, we don't always find this to be the case, so we get the 
opportunity to chose which flavor of compromise we prefer to embrace. Are 
the rails drilled accurately? To what?



>     Ron, your class gave us lots to think about, both on the theoretical and
>practical sides, and big fix and little fix sides.  I wish more classes had
>been like that.
>
>         Ed

Thank you Ed, I had a ball. I also learned that it still needs a lot of 
organizing to make it understandable.

Ron N



This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC