BACKCHECKS, BRAINS AND SHINY MEDALS

[Jon Page]

Ok, >2mm< distance from top of backcheck to bottom of tail
when hammer is the 'drop' postion. Correct?
Hmmmm  ~< ;- |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jon Page
Cape Cod. Mass
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
more later  . . .=20

At 04:35 PM 11/9/96 +0200, you wrote:
>Dear Ed, and dear List(eners)
>
>I will gladly and very carefully repeat what I told here before.
>Actually, it was like this:
>
>One day during my last course at the Piano technical Academy, I was busy
with a CFIIIS.
>My teacher, a fantastic! and very famous senior tuner/technician called
Tsuji-San, gave me some instructions about the "making of tone" and tone
refinement.
>On that day he gave me a lesson about tone quality, how to improve tone
through tuning and string adjustment. Then, afterwards,  he sort of
hesitated, started to smile and told me to find some tones that sounded
softer or.. not as strong sounding as the rest. clear neh?
>He then ordered me to pull out the action and put it on a nearby bench.
>He >gently< pushed down one of the weaker sounding keys so that the hammer
slowly made it's drop. plock...hammerdrop!
>He kept the key pushed down.=20
>In that position the hammer is not checked by the backcheck but just
resting on the bridge.
>Now..he told me to look at the very lower end of the hammer tail and..at
the same time at the very upper part of the backcheck.
>He asked me this question: "how much space, how many mm.(darn euro's)
is/are there between hammer tail and backcheck? I looked carefully, and told
him I saw about say 4 mm space.
>Then he took out a ebony hardwood pipe with a rectangular hole in it, he
put the pipe over the backcheck and turned the pipe around to the left about
two times. In other words: he screwed the=20
>backcheck up with to complete turns. get it?
>Then he asked me again "how much space, how many mm. is/are there between
hammer tail and backcheck? I looked carefully, and told him I saw about say
2 mm space.
>Now, he told me to put the action back, readjust the turned up backchecks
and also make sure that the hammers would not make the slightest contact
with the backchecks.=20
>
>(by putting one of your hands on the top of the hammers and with the other
hand depressing the keys. If you push a little on the hammers while moving
the keys up and down you might feel contact between backchecks and hammer
tails so you know that you make the hammer check bigger. If you do this
exactly right, the distance will be accurate and perfect {after allready
having made a perfect regulation!})
>
>Now my teacher asked me to compare the treated (formerly weaker) toneswith
the rest: lo and behold!! They were just as strong!!
>I asked him immediately: how can this be? what happened? He smiled,
shrugged his shoulders and said that he could not explain.
>He did tell me however that the perfect space between hammer tail and
backcheck should always be >2 mm<.
>I do not think that I can tell this event more clearly. This is exactly how
it happened and I have used the trick many times. As long as there is enough
space to make a change, you will have a result. Be careful! if the backcheck
is too high on the metal thread and you make attempts to rotate the
backcheck down, there is the possibillity of killing the thread and the
backcheck.
>So don't go too far, you will hear the wood groaning.
>I have now explained my little story a couple of times. Everybody thinks
that I am so stupid as not to have checked whether the hammer touches the
backcheck!=20
>Allthough I look basically OK.. I am very dumb....but not that bad.
>Check it out.=20
>If one of you can give a decent explanation, another mystery will have been
solved and we will all blow the horns, raise our flags and receive shiny=
 medals!
>
>
>>     I am starting to wonder if I am reading this right.      Voicing by
>>backcheck?
>>I have not been able to tell a difference in tonal strength or composition=
 by
>>moving the backcheck to different positions, UNTIL I get it close enough=
 to
>>drag on the tail as the hammer launches.  Once clear of that,  I find no
>>difference in sound. =20
>>
>>     Might I respectfully ask that  we are given a more specific=
 description
>>  than "the sound is stronger"?  and under what type of play?  I was once
>>faced with a real repetition freak, only way he was happy was with the
>>hammers checking way up by the string.  The next teacher to use the studio
>>complained about there being little power on fast repetitions. =20
>>    Is it possible that the lost of power(tone, 'stronger sound', =
 whatever
>>it is that is changing),  is because there is a effectivly a very short=
 blow
>>distance on all but the first note struck?
>>
>>=20
>>
>>Best regards,=20
>>Ed Foote
>
>
>
>friendly greetings from:=20
>
>Andr=E9 Oorebeek
>CONCERT PIANO SERVICE
>Amsterdam, the Netherlands=20
>email: oorebeek@euronet.nl
>
>=83  where MUSIC is no harm can be  =83
>
>
>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jon Page
Cape Cod. Mass
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~