Update: Schimmel Regulation Problem

[Scott Helms]

Hi all -

You might remember some time ago that I had posted a problem I was having
with a Schimmel grand action in which I couldn't get letoff close enough
to the strings. I thought somebody might be interested in the resolution.
The company FINALLY replied to my many requests for help (after 2 weeks of
long distance calls and emails to Germany) and suggested what some of you
had also mentioned - that I unscrew the letoff rail from the underside of
the hammer rail and plane it down a few mm to raise the letoff buttons
higher. However, that was not what I ended up doing for a couple of
reasons. First, the letoff rail was in 4 separate sections, and I was
concerned that I would not be able to be consistent in the amount of
material I took off of them. But more importantly, the threaded metal
posts that the dowel letoff buttons screw onto went all the way through
the rails, which would mean that I'd have to remove all of them before I
could plane the rails down - a huge and tedious job, and I'm not sure the
metal posts would be tight enough if I removed and re-installed them.

Some of you suggested that I needed to check hammer bore, so I did that
and discovered that there was a 9 mm difference between hammer bore and
string height (in other words, the shanks were WAY beyond horizontal when
the hammers contacted the strings). This seemed to me to point to my
original thought that the action brackets were too short, and therefore
hammer rail/letoff rails were too low. I used 1/8" aluminum stock to make
shims to put between the top of the action bracket and the bottom of the
hammer rail, which got the hammer bore closer to string height and also
gave me a lot more room to raise the letoff buttons. It worked like a
charm - the action regulated perfectly!

Schimmel told me that this was not an uncommon problem, and was not
specific to Schimmel grands. However, I've never run into anything like
this before, and only one other tech who responded to me had ever heard of
it either. That person said he remembered the same problem on another
Schimmel grand from the same era (1985), and the company had to send
replacement action brackets that were taller. For some reason, Schimmel
didn't offer that option, so I improvised. I appreciate everybody's input
on this problem!

Has anybody else had a problem communicating with Schimmel? It was like
pulling teeth to get them to respond to me at all.
-- 
Scott A. Helms, RPT
Helms Music Enterprises
(269) 381-4521
www.helmsmusic.net