One broken jack

[Susan Kline]

Dear Mark,

Have you tried removing or loosening the soft pedal compensating rail?
Perhaps by removing one of the main action brackets?

Good luck. I'm sure there is some way to remove the wippens.

Susan



At 08:58 PM 4/7/99 -0400, you wrote:
>The patient: an old Shaw upright. Seems to have been a quality piano, with
>sostenuto and the bar below the wippens that takes up lost motion when the
>soft pedal is on. It was in such junky shape that I was tempted to turn
>down the job, but the customer pleaded and begged, and actually it turned
>out fine. Naturally, she had already refinished it before calling a
>technician.
>
>Everything is fixed adequately except one broken jack. A new jack would do
>the trick, and I could scrounge one from scrap parts. But, I can't get the
>wippen out. The rail related to the soft pedal is in the way, and removing
>it seems next to impossible. I did try, even unscrewing wippens so I could
>slide it sideways. But it's one of those pianos where the wood is old and
>brittle and delicate, so I gave up on that.
>
>I need to replace the jack without removing the wippen. I suppose I need
>to break the jack flange free from the wippen, replace the jack, and
>reglue the flange. There is little room to work. Any suggestions as to how
>to approach the task?
>
>Mark Graham
>Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music
>