Heavy action on Steinway "L"

[Vince Mrykalo]

The hammers are too heavy for the leverage of the action.  Either lighten
up the hammers or change the leverage.  Changing leverage may be the better
way to go, but is very involved.  You can only go so far by lightening the
hammers, and it may be you won't be able to go far enough.  You will need
to go far enough to be able to remove lead from the keys, but then you may
compromise tone by going too light.  By up and downweight measurements, you
will be able to see if the problem is excess friction.  The only course
left is to change the action leverage.  

Vince Mrykalo 
vince@byu.edu

At 02:21 PM 4/12/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Greetings all,

>I thought that the parts replaced (specifically knuckles) probably were
>different from the originals and threw off the geometry of the action. I
>ran into this once before where the new smaller knuckle increased weight
>dramatically. 
>there's much work left to do on their other pianos. I must confess to
>have largely ignored the posts on reweighing actions in the past
>thinking I would never have to do it as I'm not doing that much major
>rebuilding. Well now I seem to have this dropped in my lap and I need to
>deal with it.
>    I spent a fair amount of time so far and bought the gram weights
>from pianotech along with a larger sized box of s,m,l and xl lead
>weights to install. As I played with them I placed the desired weight of
>50 grams on the key and tapped the stack a few times and nothing. I
>repeated this adding gram weights until I reached the point when the
>hammers would reach letoff within 3-4 taps on the stack. I read high
>70's in the bass gradually coming down to mid 60's in the treble. I then
>tried the opposite way of putting on the desired weight and then laying
>lead weights on top the key to reach letoff the same way. Well for you
>folks good at this I needn't tell you that it took a lot of weight. Not
>only would I  have to add too much weight , there's no where to put
>them! I can't even see where I could add 1-2 more anywhere in the bass!!
>Any suggestions?
>    In closing, for those of you who read my last post, I do want to
>learn. Can any of you point me to recent journal articles that may be of
>help? Do any of you experienced with this have any input about my
>specific situation? Thanks in advance for your help!!!  I this list
>great or what?!?
>                        regards,
>                        Greg Newell
>