Hitch pin adjustment

[Horace Greeley]

Richard,

Sorry.  Just being unusually cryptic, even for me.

Basically, if the sound isn't in the piano to begin with, we can't get it
out.  In electron-land, this is called GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

Point is, things like bearing have to be a reasonably accurate as a given
situation allows them to be.  Thus, for example, in talking about 1- 1.5
degrees, I was thinking about a new board - not one that had been in
service (for a while, anyway).  In that case, Del's figures of roughly 1/2
that would be good starting points.  Once those kinds of issues are
addressed, then those factors should be set somewhat aside while one
considers the other factors which influence piano tone, hammers being one
such factor.

Moving to the hammers then, I'm sure we've all seen countless instruments
in which some well-meaning person has shaped, hardened, needled, whatevered
various hammers into oblivion.  Which is a nice way of saying made them
unusable for their designed purpose. All because they did not address
basics first, bearing issues being among those basics.

For example, for a while, one well known maker had well-intentioned
employees who thought they were installing headbolts on diesel engines, not
plate bolts on pianos.  One result of this was that they bearing
(especially in the second treble) was often on the order of 0.050"-0.060"
(or more).  This, one might say, had a tendency to bind the soundboard a
bit too much.  Once one had dealt with properly tightening the plate and
nose bolts (leaving that procedure aside, for the moment), it was still
often necessary to shim up the aliquots to get any resonance out of the
treble whatsoever.  No amount of hammer work was going to do anything other
than to exacerbate these problems.

So, anyway, my apologies for being less than clear.  Hope this helps.

Best.

Horace



At 12:11 AM 7/24/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>----------
>> From: Horace Greeley <hgreeley@leland.Stanford.EDU>
>> To: pianotech@ptg.org
>> Subject: Re: Hitch pin adjustment
>> Date: Wednesday, July 23, 1997 10:36 AM
>> Certainly, make your measurements (and look for 1 to 1.5 degrees
>> deflection), but then make sure that the hammers still work, etc.
>> 
>> More later, if needed.
>> 
>> Best of luck...
>
>
>Wondering how deflecting bearing behind the bridge (raising or
>lowereing accujust in Baldsin) would affect how the hammers would
>work.  
>
>Richard Moody
>
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>
>
>> 
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Horace Greeley, MCPS			voice:	415.725.9062
Systems Analyst			email:	hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
Controller's Office			fax:	415.725.8014
Stanford University