Shift Problem - LONG

[Fred S. Sturm]

    In case anyone's interested, I solved my problem (not quite Avery's) by doing
something slightly different than what I had thought of initially. The underlever
blocks that hold the pivot pin are nice and symmetrical. So I removed them,
reversed them (left to right, not up to down), and drilled a new hole for the
pivot pin on the other end of the blocks about 1/16" farther to the treble (I
decided that was much easier than trying to plug the screw holes and move the
blocks by that small an amount). I had first determined that distance by seeing
how much adjustment I had in the pedal rod (a lot, and screwing the nut down all
the way left the lever end that extends throught the key bed over by about 1/16").

    Result: plenty of room for a stop felt and screw between lever and key bed,
without removing any wood. And plenty of shift. BTW, in case you find the need to
do this, it's finicky work, and requires a drill press (I don't have one here, but
do have a good relationship with the theater tech guy, so I use his. Absolutely
must be 90 degrees). No room for being sloppy. But only took about an hour,
including puzzling through. I knew a little bit would make a big difference, but
didn't realize it would be so drastic a difference. Gives me more of an
appreciation for the factory guys who almost always get it right.
Regards,
Fred

"Fred S. Sturm" wrote:

>     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
>