List, This came from a different list but thought some of you who work on newer Baldwin's might be particularly interested. Avery > On 4/2/02 at 4:47 PM Michelle L Stranges wrote: > > >Hello folks!! > > > >Has anyone ever tried to put some sort of "turnbuckle" in Steinway > >(or any other grands') lyre braces to take up the space that causes > >knocking/rocking problems?? > > > >I like the newer Baldwin grand idea for helping this. > > > >(The "T" screw at the top that you twist into a space cut out in > >the underside of the keybed to make fit tight.) > > > >Anyone try doing this Baldwin idea on other pianos??? > > > >:) michelle > >stranges@oswego.edu I sent this to Joel Rappaport and below are his comments about it (with his permission): > As far as the comments from Michelle L Stranges on the current Baldwin >system, if it is the same system that we experienced for the last four >summers at Tanglewood, all I can say is "no, no, No NO" IMHO. Those little >T-screws go into a brass sleeve that is knurled and inserted into a hole >drilled into the top of the wooden support stick. Problem is, the sleeve >goes into end grain and even though knurled, has a tendency to become loose >so that not only is the stick no longer adjustable, you can't shorten it >enough to remove it. So the whole lyre now has to come off to repair the >exquisitely engineered feature. The factory 'solution' is to drop CA glue >around the sleeve to 'fix' it in the wood. We tried that at Tanglewood and >the result was that the sleeve then twirled around in the CA glue instead of >the wood. We had to (with great trouble) remove the sleeve and glue veneer >into the hole to provide some flat grain, then reinsert the sleeve. That >was the only thing that worked. This was probably the one most common >complaint we had to trouble shoot, even more than tuning calls. >Ted Sambell's and Denis Brassard's invention sounds so much better. And I >have seen the threaded brass cup on Bösendorfer grands, too. It's a nice, >simple and _workable_ solution.
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