[CAUT] Sostenuto mounting

[Jeff Tanner]

I'll add just that it is a royal pain in the rear just to regulate the 
damper upstop rail in all pianos with belly mounted sostenuto systems.  The 
screws tend to be behind the sostenuto brackets and they're nearly 
impossible to get to.
Tanner

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu>
To: "College and University Technicians" <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 2:29 PM
Subject: [CAUT] Sostenuto mounting (was Re: Pianotech Digest, Vol 1301,Issue 
134)


> On Jul 18, 2008, at 10:36 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote:
>
>>>
>>> If you look at it from another perspective, how often does
>>> one need to regulate a sostenuto vs. how often would one
>>> need to get to the damper underlevers for a, say, action
>>> center problem (especially in some environments?) What
>>> would be a greater priority for an institutional
>>> technician? (Israel)
>>
>> I personally haven't found it to be a real problem getting past the 
>> sostenuto for damper service problems, but then I don't do a lot of 
>> panic concert patch work. In that lone instance, I can see an  occasional 
>> potential advantage. (Ron)
>
> I'm with Israel on this one. And I'm not talking about panic concert 
> patch work. One example is a bad old Samick grand (80s vintage with  all 
> the warts) in a private school I service, where joint freeze-ups  occur on 
> a fairly regular basis. Yes, the whole darned back action  should be 
> re-pinned, re-bushed, replaced, whatever. And meanwhile the  whole 
> keyboard should be releaded, and the wipp assist springs  regulated, etc, 
> etc. If time and financial priorities allowed.
> Meanwhile, a top flange freezes, meaning that damper is stuck,  meaning 
> the piano is essentially unusable. To remove the underlever  and deal with 
> it (assuming a bit of Protek doesn't do the trick, and  it usually 
> doesn't), I have to virtually demount the sostenuto system  (loosen most 
> screws, remove a couple) in order to get enough  clearance. And then 
> reverse the process when I'm done. So a fairly  minor fix becomes much 
> more of a headache than necessary, kind of like  actions that require ten 
> or more screws to be removed before you can  get at them, all to tighten 
> one loose action screw. [And, yes, I check  all the other top flanges 
> while I have it apart (if there is time),  but the freeze-ups still emerge 
> unpredictably.]
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> University of New Mexico
> fssturm at unm.edu
>
>
>