oddities puzzler #2

[Thomas D. Seay, III]

Has the action rail separated, delaminated, or split?

>All sorts of new experiences this week. Normally, I don't like puzzlers
>much, because I trouble shoot with a sort of elimination decision tree,
>rather than a list of possibilities to check, and I need to have all three
>hands on something to understand it. This one, however, I thought was
>unusual enough to show you.
>
>It's an older generic console (didn't even look at the name). As I was
>taking the front off, I plunked on a few keys to get some idea of what I
>was up against, when I noticed the treble half didn't play. "Oh yea", she
>said, "The kids have been having trouble up there." So why don't they tell
>you these things when they schedule the appointment?
>
>The bass half worked fine, but from mid treble up, there was progressively
>more and more lost motion until the hammers wouldn't move at all in the
>last octave and a half. Keys, keybed, or action specific? Running a finger
>across the top of the hammer moldings and again across the backchecks
>indicated that the flanges were intact and the screws were holding them in
>place on the rail. I lifted wippens by hand and got the same effect as with
>the keys. Ding! Diagnostics complete, in about half a minute. Having
>decided what I was looking for, I pulled the action and found what
>logically had to be the only possible reason for the symptoms, though this
>is the first time I've seen it... in a vertical.
>
>I'm off to the shop now to fix it. Name "it".
>
>Ron N



Tom Seay
School of Music
The University of Texas at Austin
mailto:t.seay@mail.utexas.edu