Chilean Report - Yamaha C1

[Brian Lawson]

And  it took you five days to do all this, me thinks you were on holiday :)

I had a similar outing, to Windhoek, Namibia to the national theatre,
although I only had the day and just a clean up of the action and replace a
missing hammer - how do you lose a grand action hammer?

pics at http://home.global.co.za/~piano/work/namib


Brian



----- Original Message -----
From: "Newton Hunt" <nhunt@optonline.net>
Sent: 08 March, 2002 01:07 AM
Subject: Chilean Report - Yamaha C1


In addition to the letter sent by Fernando Rosas I would like to expand
upon his report.

Chile is a loooong way down there, nine and more hours flying time!  I
arrived in the mid morning and Fernando met me at the airport.

We went to his home and I started taking measurements, Down Weight, Up
Weight then hammer weights, key weights and key ratios.

Balance weights showed 38 to 43 grams with friction between 12 and 17
grams.  Key ratio is .51 with front weights above the ceiling and strike
ratio around 6.1 to 6.3.  While weighing wippens I noticed the capstan
contact point was behind the center of the cushion and knew immediately
where some of the problems lie.

I polished the keypins, fronts and centers, lubricated the pins and
bushings with spray teflon and inserted each key, finding the button
bushings overly tight.  It was obvious that some technician had way, way
over eased the balance rail holes and some of the front bushings as
well.  I polished and lubricated the capstans and lubricated the
knuckles.

If someone had lubricated the knuckles in the first place the action
would have performed reasonably well.

Yamaha's practice is often to have stops for the action bracket feet at
the front of the keyframe, leaving some room for the action to move
towards the back of the frame.  Since I was thinking of doing just that
I took some measurements with the action set further back and found that
the balance weight more closely resembled our target range.  I prepared
some thick card punchings, about 0.045", and moved the action that far
back, 2.3 mm and took more serious measurements.  Fernando liked the
results and requested that the stack be moved instead of other
approaches.  I was not fully convinced but did as he suggested.

Fortunately I also noticed that there was just enough room for the
action to be moved forward enough to get a good strike point and not
cause problems with the case.  So it was done.

Of course that drastically changed the regulation but I determined the a
dip of 10.2 mm and a hammer travel of 46 mm would give me 1+ mm of
safety factor.  The rest was easy, a standard regulation.

I did have to cut the keyframe a little to allow the bass bracket to
move the needed distance.  Man, that is hard wood!  Especially for a
small pocket knife.

The keys are generally overweight at the front, the hammers are over
weight in the middle and even more over weight in the treble.  I really
would have liked to reduce hammer weight 1 to 1.2 grams and then remove
a consequential amount of lead from the key fronts.  This would have
give us a really nice action with less inertia and a lower balance
weight.

The ending balance weight was from 37 to 40 grams (in the high treble)
but the action felt good, very responsive, controllable and the customer
was very happy.

Why Yamaha would allow a piano with such an obvious weight problem leave
the factory is beyond my ken and certainly violates every precept of
Yamaha I have accumulated over the last 30 years working on the pianos
and for a Yamaha dealer for 11 years.

This piano had been serviced by a technician from Panama and why he did
not think to lubricate the knuckles I cannot fathom.  This piano was
obviously very sick and it should have had better service than it got.

Unfortunately Yamaha has a poor reputation in Santiago because the
company has been very poorly represented.  The better Yamahas have not
been in that venue so the piano is unknown.  Those Yamahas that have
been sold in Santiago are the smaller less expensive units.

Santiago is a lovely city, 5 million people, subways, buses (nasty
drivers but what else is new), lots of growing things and it is busy and
the people are hard working.  They have crime, pollution, service
problems and all the rest of the junk that comes with a big city but the
people are incredibly gracious, generous to a fault, educated and
willing to learn.

Fernando introduced me to the largest piano dealer in Santiago.  He
sells, Steinway, Bosendorfer, Blüthner and a couple of other makes, one
from England and another piano brand by Bösendorfer.  His shop looks
like any other piano shop I have been in.  Pianos all over the place
some torn down, some obvious junk and some potentially really good.  He
has about eight folks working there, finisher, action people, key people
and all the rest that a working shop needs including outside tuners.

I showed the owner, Lovro Mrksa, some of my toys and gave him an idea or
two about some of his problems.  One severe problems was a contaminated
S&S pinblock.  Some kind of black resin or something like that.  The
pins were absolutely untunable.  I suggested a new block but new blocks
are not to be had there and making them is a bit of a chore unless you
have the equipment to do them.  Beech is unknown and maple is soft
there.  He need using cement, specifically grout for tiles but without
sand.  Amazingly this cut the popping and sticking down to a manageable
level.  He had started the process when I left so I do not know the
ultimate result.  These guys are innovative and do some nice work.  I
think they would benefit from knowing more theory and different
practices that we use up here.  He sees mostly old German pianos.  Some
good, some trash and some great.  I think I would like to go down there
to teach them some of what I know about piano restorations and maybe do
a piano or two.

I do love that type of thing.  Teaching, doing to new places, meeting
new people and facing new challenges.

Chile is a wonderful country, the driest desert, coldest climate, second
tallest mountain peak (only Mt. Everest is higher) and lots of earth
quakes and some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere.

More, the people are beautiful, genteel, generous, gracious,
appreciative and love to eat and drink and enjoy life.  Now what more
could a person ask?

The port city of Valparaiso is fascinating with buildings and homes
built up the mountain side.  It is charming with a sense of history,
elegance, tradition and purpose that surrounding communities do not
have.  The people are warm and friendly.  The bay that Valparaiso and
Concón encompass is hugh with deep waters and was _the_ primary port
stop for all ships coming and going around the cape.  Shipping has
dropped off since the opening of the Panama Canal but there is still
activity there.  Concón is not elegant or cultured as Valparaiso but it
is a nice place to visit and have a drink.  Viño del Mar (Vineyard of
the Sea) sits between these two extremes and is a nice community made up
of tourist hotels, private residences and corporate buildings, old and
new construction and differing architectures.  All in all, a wonderful
place to visit with a native to show the best vantage points and the
best places to eat and drink.  Go, you'll like it.

Chile is America's fruit basket.  They grow wonderful grapes that make
it to our tables but a lot of them get diverted into wine vats that
produce some wonderful wines.  Go look for the Chilean wines and enjoy
high quality at very reasonable prices.

Overall cost of living is low there but anything high tech is very
costly indeed.

Finally I can say that this is a country that desperately needs some
really good technicians to bring up the overall quality of the good
pianos there.  The climate is gentle to pianos which makes them last so
much longer than they do here.

Would I like to go back?  You bet your bippy I would!

Newton