Bosendorfer dampers

[Ron Nossaman]

At 10:34 PM 3/26/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Holy List, please help me !
>I'm running into trouble with the bass dampers of a Bosendorfer 170. As the
>felt had become noisy, I substituted them all. Everithing was fine but the
>bass bichords. The decay time is too long. Everything regulated, the damper
>heads work 90 degrees to the strings, open regularly, etc., but if you play
>"staccato", the fundamental and the 2° harmonic take too long to decay. I
>tried many things, i.e. different lenght of the felt, different position,
>squeezed the felt to make it enter a little more into the bichords, but
>nothing made it fine. Besides that, my customer says that it's not working
>as well as before...
>But before it was too noisy, and it has never had a good damping on the
>bass, so now I must do something resolutive !
>In the LIST we trust...
>
>Thank you !
>Luigi Lamacchia
>www.inmedia.it/lamacchia
>
>


Hi Luigi,
Here's another possibility. Dampers will lie to you. It's not that uncommon,
for me at least, to find that my noisy bichords are actually noisy
monochords in sympathy. First, play (staccato) one of the noisy bichords.
Immediately after the damper hits the strings, touch both strings with your
finger. If the noise immediately stops, it's the bichord damper that's the
problem. If the noise doesn't immediately stop, lay your hand across the
monochords. If that doesn't stop it either, check the low tenor trichords
the same way. When you know for sure what's making the noise, and it's the
low bass, or the bichords, try three small (maybe 1/2 - 5/8") wedges instead
of two in the noisy areas. The middle wedge of the three doesn't have to be
centered. If it's the low tenor trichords, try cutting 1/4 - 1/3 of the
length of the wedge, out of the center of the wedge. Make two small ones out
of one big one. Hope this helps. 

 Ron