Followup on Upright Damper Touchweight

[Ken Jankura]

I just did another partial day regulation, or should I say triage, this time
on a Whitney Console. It felt very heavy when coupled with the small sound
it emitted and, yes, this time it was early damper lift coupled with high
damper spring tension. After I fixed the early lift, even lifting a little
late, you could still really feel the dampers engaging. With the action out,
from the rear, I used the Hart spring tool to 'massage' the curve in the
damper spring. It was easy and quick and I could feel a big difference right
there on the damper lever. I hoped I hadn't made them too weak but all
seemed to be ok when I reinstalled the action. This Whitney was bleeding
sound like crazy from the very low bass anyway, and as I only improved that
by correcting the damper lift, I figured it was all I was gonna get in this
situation. So, Go for it, Terry. Bend 'em! The dampers will probably work
fine at half strength. If they don't, you could always experiment by adding
mass to the lever at the top.
Ken Jankura RPT
Fayetteville PA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>

> I had posed the question a couple days ago regarding upright damper effect
on touchweight.
>
> Today I serviced a 4-year-old Samick studio. It seemed to have a heavy
touch. I quickly measured the middle octave of naturals. They averaged about
58 grams of DW. Then I let go of the damper pedal and measured how much DW
was required to lift the damper. The average was 110 grams!
>
> This seemed excessive to me. I did the same thing to my Boston GP178
grand. It has a very pleasant touchweight. DW averaged 50 grams, and it
required about 75 grams to lift the dampers.
>
> So the unpleasant vertical had 52 grams of damper resistance, and the
pleasant grand had only 25 grams. My guess would be that it would be nice to
see if the dampers on the Samick were still effective with half their
resistance.
>
> Any other thoughts?
>
> Terry Farrell
>
>
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