Shift Problem - LONG

[Fred S. Sturm]

    Interesting. I had a somewhat similar problem with shift on our one to two
year old D. I was giving it my first thorough going over late this summer,
including deciding to center the hammers on the strings (Steinway likes to have
the strings and hammers so that the string cuts are close to the left side of
the crown. I won't go into why I wanted to change beyond saying having the
hammers centered gives more flexibility as to whether shift gets you a soft
part of the hammer or misses a string, or gives the pianist both options. And
gives me the option of setting the shift stop for one or other).
    I was adjusting the shift stop screw, and tested it out to find the shift
lever was crashing into the keybed. That is, to get enough shift to miss the
left string for sure (not catching it with the corner of the hammer), with
hammers centered, there wasn't enough space between lever and key bed. Never
run into this before. There has always been enough room so that, left
unattended for a couple years, the hammers could maybe hit the neighboring
unison without any problem of shift lever crashing into keybed, with resulting
complaint about tuning ;-).
    I left it for the time being (IOW, adjusted the screw so the hammers don't
clear the string, but just voiced the hammers so the shift strike is a
different color, which voicing I was planning to do anyway), and hadn't found
time to get back to it until this morning. I'm thinking I have three options:
1) remove wood from keybed slot, where the lever is hitting (I'll probably need
to do that regardless, so I can get room to put in a stop there)
2) add wood to the keyframe slot (probably glue in a shim of ubiquitous
hornbeam)
3) plug and move the screws holding the underlever to the keybed.
    Not the same geometric problem, but makes me wonder if Steinway made some
change in design that isn't working.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico

Avery Todd wrote:

> List,
>
> Last night, I put this post on pianotech. This is a little long
> but I thought some of you might find it interesting. Sorry about
> the duplication for those of you who are on both lists.
>
> ================================================================
> I ran into a new problem today I've never had before on a
> Steinway 'B'.
>
> The piano is one Abbey Simon uses in his studio and he's been
> complaining that there wasn't enough difference when he uses the
> "soft" pedal and there's too much noise when shifting.
>
> While working on it today, I discovered that the noise is because
> the keyframe is hitting the cheek block instead of the stop screw
> (wood hitting wood).
>
> With the block out, the action travelled a good bit further so I
> adjusted the screw to stop the noise. But now, as it was before,
> the action isn't travelling far enough to clear the left string,
> which was the basic problem to begin with (except for the noise).
>
> I don't see anything I can do to make the action shift further
> except reduce the thickness of the cheek block. The hammers are
> very well aligned to the strings, so that's not the problem.
>
> Any ideas I've overlooked? The piano is only about 1 yr. old. The
> 5 yr. old one shifts much further and is fine. [It's also a 'B',
> BTW.] Thanks for any ideas.
>