birdcages

[Stephen Powell]

Okay, I have to jump in on this one!  Last year I "reconditioned" the action
of one of these things - yeah I know, but the owners were willing to pay
what it cost even after I tried to talk them out of it.  Anyway, I put in a
new set of damper felts that I cut myself [the precut set I got from Renner
were too flimsy IMO] and I was very surprised how well the thing damped,
although still not as well as an underdamper.  The dampers above the
tenor/treble break were next to useless though because there isn't enough
room between the hammers and v-bar for dampers.

I'm beginning to wonder about this conspiricy thing - I see on average one
or two birdcages per week.  Somebody's got it in for me!

Stephen

Auckland, NZ


>In a message dated 2/11/00 2:12:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>bases-loaded@juno.com writes:
>
><< Hello -
>
> After having the good fortune to have not run into a birdcage action in
> app. 10 years, I had the extreme misfortune to run into 2 of them this
> week.  I have basically two questions, although "what were they
> thinking?" also comes to mind.
>
> 1.  Do these actions ever damp well?  In both instances, the damper felt
> seemed soft enough, and was regulated properly, but the pianos sounded as
> if someone forgot to install dampers!
>
> 2.  What is the most sane way to tune these critters?  I actually had to
> lean the actions back and pluck strings in the center section, as it was
> impossible to get mutes in there.  Do you lean it back and strip mute the
> whole thing?  I can't imagine a process that isn't unwieldy...
>
> It is no great surprise to me that this design went out of favor 100
> years ago!
>
> Mark Potter
> bases-loaded@juno.com
>
>