[CAUT] [pianotech] Key balancing

[Fred Sturm]

On Dec 16, 2010, at 10:16 PM, <johnparham at piano88.com> wrote:

> 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

Yes. A couple ways to make it easy:
1) glue a lead on top of the back of a key - a biggish glob of  
titebond. I have not seen them fall off yet. (I have done this on a  
Wurlitzer player, where I only had access to place leads with  
tweezers, couldn't pull keys without removing the player mechanism -  
not worth the trouble).
2) screw a half "jiffy lead" on top.
3) drill a hole down from the top of the key and insert a lead  
(obviously the smaller ones, narrower than the key.
	Also, the wood screw idea: I like a large headed, maybe #10 - 12  
machine screw, 1/2 - 1" for the purpose.

BTW, the technique of removing wood from a key to balance it goes back  
at least to harpsichord makers, who wanted everything as light as  
possible. Enough wood removed so the key barely returned.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"I am only interested in music that is better than it can be played."  
Schnabel