Tuning lever tip: quality of fit?

[Michael Gebhardt]

Hi again to all you guys!

And thanks a lot for all the quick and extensive replies, I 
really appreciate your helpfulness.

Here some more thoughts about the problem:
I've just come back from the music room in the student 
housing are where I live. There is an old upright in very 
bad condition, but I think it's good enough to give a clue 
about the quality of fit between tip and pin. So I tried to 
get a more quantitative estimate of the amount of rocking. 

On average, it seems that the outer end of the lever has a 
play (around the axis of the pin) of approximately 1/2 in. 
at a distance of 11 in. from the pin. But that's not all, 
it rocks really a lot around an axis perpendicular to the 
pin and lever, this means you can rock the lever back and 
forth towards and away from the pinblock. Do these 
dimensions seem within the normal variation to you or would 
you suggest sending the tip back? But as I understand Jeff, 
chances to get something better are low... :-(

Furthermore, I'm not sure if there is a problem in size of 
the tip. I've read from several sources that the tip should 
approach the wire coil as close as possible without 
touching. It definitely looks as if it was touching the 
coil, though, but I'm not sure if it's just "infinitely" 
close. So what are your experiences, should there be a 
clearly visible gap between tip and wire coil? By the way, 
it looked the same on an old grand I've tried on. The 
upright piano I mentioned contains two larger pins for 
which my tip obviously is to small, so I guess it's not 
erroneously labeled #2 while actually being #3.

The literature on piano tuning is so concerned with the 
flexing of the tuning lever. But to me, that flexing seems 
to be completely negligible compared to the fitting problem 
between tip and pin.

Thanks again and (frustraded) greetings

Michael