[ some "oddly noisy" Baldwin 45"hamilton actions..........]

[Phil Bondi]

caught in the filters..I believe the sender meant to send it to 
pianotech, so please include his address in your reply.

Thanks,

-Phil, admin for the week



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[admin] some "oddly noisy" Baldwin 45"/hamilton actions..........
Date: 	Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:39:09 -0600
From: 	Albert Thomas <thomaaw@auburn.edu>
To: 	<pianotech-owner@ptg.org>



Situation:   Occasionally I find an extraordinarily noisy Baldwin/studio
action.........sounds as though every shank-to-hammer glue bond is
broken,  every hammer flange is loose,  etc.........
To briefly describe it using a recent occurrence instead of a
longwinded generic summary :  a recent customer so far out of town that
the time zone  included mention of the last century;  it is the last
piano on that time-warp tour, and running far into after-dark hours
"right smack" in the greatroom of the jolly and noisy family, I
encounter the bizarre noisemaker ("of course they have never noticed it,
God bless 'em indeed though, great locally-successful people trying to
feed me supper, cookies and sodas")  The basic "harp" of the approx.- 35
year old Hamilton was very good, but the action parts were odd in that
the shanks were spinet-diameter;  all hammer flanges were loose but I
tightened them;  not one single shank-to-hammer glue joint was broken
although most glue joints were obviously on the short side of
quality-control;  there was a functioning DamppChaser dehumidifier with
No Humidistat (they are adamant to have that corrected,  they understood
the explanation perfectly.........the first such explanation they had
ever received) etc. but......
    the bottom line,   more than 50 % of noise remained after repairing
one jack stirrup brokengluejoint , tightening all hammer flanges,  and
...........however having to tune and leave in some hurry without a
total research of the rest of the action..........my fault and time
fault.........
        any suggestions?   happens rarely enough that I have failed to
do follow-up research during several occurrences over so many
years.........I need a tightly-focussed suggestion if possible,  since
it is easier to find every problem in an institutional piano serviced
often, but easy for me to forget to research the outlying time-pressure
pianos seen only once or twice in a lifetime............

Albert Thomas,  Associate Member PTG,   Bach. Mus. and Med., Master of
Music Piano Performance
Auburn University
Albert Thomas Piano Service,  Auburn, Alabama;   Compton, Arkansas