Happy end

[Susan Kline]

Fernando, I'm delighted that your effort to fix your piano had such
wonderful results for both you and Newton. I'm so glad that you
wrote to pianotech and made your offer.

Susan Kline

At 04:13 PM 3/7/2002 -0300, you wrote:
>Hello everybody:
>
>I want to share my last news regarding my request of early january this
>year.  For those who don't remember, I asked for a technician to come to
>Chile to solve my problem of heavy action in my almost new Yamaha C1 grand
>piano.
>
>Well, after many messages from and to there, I received an offer from Newton
>Hunt to come to my home and help me in resolving my problem.  I decided to
>take the risk due to 2 reasons: 1) I really like my piano and I thought that
>it deserved an opportunity 2) Newton's knowledge and experience seemed very
>good for me after the interchange of a lot of messages.  It looks like a
>venture, and it was.  For me and for him.  For me, because I wasn't
>absolutely sure about his skills, and, for him, because I didn't give him
>any dollar before his arrival.  So, it was a trust founded agreement.  The
>way agreements have to be done in a world we want to live in.
>
>This is the technical part of the story:
>
>Newton arrives to Santiago on february 21.  He begins taking measurements of
>DW (58-60 gr. average) and UW (24-30 gr. average) and putting the figures
>into a spreadsheet in order to check the equation of balance.  Figures are
>too high for me and for him as well.  He starts polishing pins and capstans.
>Looking at the bottom of the wippens  support cushions), Newton notices that
>capstans are not pushing in the right place, too close to the center pin of
>the wippen.  He explains me that the closer to the center pin, the lower the
>leverage, I absolutely agree. In fact, the marks of the capstans are
>visually not in the right place.  At the same time, he notices that the
>action brackets can be moved in the key frame by drilling new holes, since
>there is a gap for moving the action brackets forwards and backwards. By
>moving it, we can reach the proper leverage.  Moving the action brackets
>implies also that the whole keyframe has to be relocated in order to match
>the right points for hammers to impact the strings (especially in the
>treble). This issue explains more than a half of the problem, the rest is
>lubrication (especially knuckles with teflon powder), regulation, to loosen
>bushings, etc. After the job is done, figures are dramatically different, DW
>in a 48g to 50g range and UW in a 26 to 32 range in average). The action
>feels now absolutely different. Now is a normal action for this kind of
>piano, and I find it's really comfortable with good dynamics control.  Now
>the solution looks easy and obvious, but before it was a puzzle to solve. In
>total, 5 days of work. Newton did it.
>
>I really like the piano the way it feels now.  I don't know how it would
>feel after applying the Stanwood system. Probably I will never know.  But I
>don't believe it's necessary, since I was looking for a good and comfortable
>Lexus, not for a Mercedes with turbo.
>
>The personal part of the story is even better, Newton is a wonderful guy and
>we spent a very nice time together. He also met local technicians and could
>share experience and knowledge.
>
>The intention of this message is to tell you how the story ends, since you
>were so kind in sharing your knowledge with me and in giving me advice.
>Fortunately, the story has a happy end. Thanks to Newton Hunt (especially of
>course) and to everyone in this list who helped me.
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Fernando