Lance writes: << <<After the key is depressed and only partially raised (1/8 inch?) for the next blow, upon the next key depression the hammer gets wedged against the backcheck and blocks. >> Lance - Newton & Ed have covered most of it, between them. I have run into this on every S&S I've seen over the last week here in NH, where the RH has been between 70% - 100% since the beginning of the month!. In all cases, is was a combibnation of jack position & height, backchecking, lack of spring tension, and tight (especially jack) pinning. In the past, I've seen this problem occur after the hammers had been filed once or twice, and the shanks had been raised well above the rest cushions to bring hammer-blow distance close to specs. In those cases, the only short term cure was to increase hammer-blow AND keydip (to preserve aftertouch). Tightening the balancier pinning didn't seem to help. The long-term cure was new S&S hammers on Renner shanks & reps. Ed's correct - if you raise the hammer shanks to far above the rest cushions you'll be "inviting repitition failure". I always grind my hammer tails to approximately the same radius as the hammer-shank swing and rarely if ever have checking problems. In fact, this is something that I often end up doing to new hammers where there's a checking problem - it preserves the leather on the checks, also. - Mark Dierauf Concord, NH
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC