There is not any guarantee that the old rail will line up well enough with the strings after a soundboard / bridge replacement. Sounds to me like a fine opportunity to make yourself a brand new rail. This is actually quite easy and its a good thing to be able to know how to do. We did pretty much exactly this at the Oberlin Steinway seminar this summer as they had a few older Steinways with a double bushing cloth solution that they wanted to convert to single cloth bushings. Marking the bushing holes is quite easy... drilling should be done with fence and drill press... you want to be dead accurate. Since doing that this summer I've looked at many a guide rail. Looks to me like lots of guys at factories get pretty damned good at free hand drilling.... and by that I mean they get good enough to get away with it... but not good enough to not leave significant room for improvement. Cheers RicB List, I just got our Steinway A back from getting a new board, bridges, etc replaced. The damper guide rail was not reattached and no new holes were drilled in the board for the screws. >From where do I measure to align the rail back properly so the dampers will be in the right place? Thanks in advance! Paul
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