[CAUT] [pianotech] Key balancing

[johnparham at piano88.com]

Ron,

I seem to run across a lot of spinets whose high treble keys BARELY
return because of how short they are.  I haven't tried the key gutting
technique.  The other day I was prepared to to screw a wood screw into
the back of the key to encourage the geometry, but the situation did not
require it.

Has anyone else tried weighting the rear of spinet keys as a way to
encourage them to come back up?

-John Parham

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [pianotech] Key balancing
> From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net>
> Date: Tue, December 14, 2010 11:46 pm
> To: pianotech at ptg.org, caut at ptg.org
> 
> 
> A Cable spinet this morning, was a semitone low, and had the compulsory 
> non-repeating C-8, so I fixed both. I've done this to dozens, if not 
> hundreds of small pianos (mostly Baldwins, it seems [the key, that is]), 
> and it's the only thing I've found that is reliable. Takes about equal 
> amounts of time to disassemble and reassemble as to do the whittling. 
> This is why the bottom of my tool box has always had giant shavings of 
> one sort or another in it since day one.
> 
> Ron N