Factory Overstrike

[Farrell]

Hi Ric - This piano is only ten years old and barely played. Original 
hammers with no discernable wear. This is factory work, not the work of some 
shmuck in his/her garage.

Hi Philip - The hammer is perpendicular to the shank and the hammer tip is a 
full quarter-inch below the string plane when the shank is horizontal. This 
is NOT a well set-up action - this IS a screwed up action!

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ric Brekne" <ricbrek@broadpark.no>

> Boy are we on the same rollercoaster.  I just got done doing a hammer
> replacement on a Bluthner here at school. Someone had replaced these
> hammers a few years back and had really managed to muck up the bore
> length.  A couple <<clues>> were drop screws turned up as high as
> possible and still too much drop,  hammer rest rail at 48 mm from
> strings !!... ie a reallllly short stroke.  These hammers were so worn
> down it was impossible to be sure of the origional bore length, but
> after boring to 53 mm for the new hammers I had to lower everything like
> drastically.   Seems like many techs doing this kind of work still dont
> know how do deal with finding the proper bore length.  My best guess on
> this one was that whomever just guessed at the bore length based on a
> worn down set of hammers.
>
> Cheers
> RicB

>
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phillip Ford" <fordpiano@earthlink.net>

 Could you clarify what you mean by overstrike?  Are the hammers square to
> the shank?  Or are they square to the strings with a short bore?
>
> We had a discussion about this a few months back.  You might check the
> archives.  Some of it ended up in the Journal Q & A Roundtable a few 
> months
> ago as well.  The Feurich 220 grand that I have (whose agraffes were
> recently mentioned) had a very short bore (I don't remember the numbers
> offhand, but it may have been more than 1/4 inch), but the hammers were
> angled back so that they were striking square to the strings.  As far as I
> know this was the original setup.  This is a high quality piano with a
> Renner action.  The action regulated properly with things set up this way,
> so I have to believe it was deliberate.  This generated a discussion about
> whether the 'proper' setup is to have the hammers square to the
> shanks.  When I replaced the hammers I duplicated this setup.  The piano
> plays and sounds fine.
>
> Phil Ford


> >I experienced a new low today. I did a bunch of work on a 6' Hyundai
>>action (10 yo) and was set to do a bench regulation. Using my pre-measured
>>string heights, I found that I obviously made a gross mistake with my
>>measurement somehow. So I drove the 40 miles back to the piano and
>>re-measured - my original measurements were correct. The hammers on this
>>thing were bored to produce a full quarter-inch overstrike.
>>
>>What are the correct words here - this is amazing - did they build all
>>their pianos this way? Don't they just have some jig in the factory where
>>all hammers for this model are drilled the same way? Did somebody's finger
>>get in there and jacked the jig up a quarter inch?
>>
>>Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Maybe I just haven't been around
>>long enough!
>>
>>Terry Farrell