Ya gotta laugh...

[David Nereson]

Had a similar problem on a new Kawai or Young Chang or
something.  The wing nut would not take out any lost motion in
the pedal.  It wouldn't pull the pedal prop up through the metal
pedal lever, and when I loosened the wing nut, it spun up the
pedal prop, leaving a gap between it and the top of the pedal
lever.  Tried to pull the prop through the lever, or push it
down, and it wouldn't go either way.  It was threaded into the
flattened end of the tubular pedal lever and the only way to
adjust the pedal was to turn the prop with a vise grips.  I
thought, "This can't be right.  Why would they thread the prop
into the lever?  Then what would be the purpose of the wing nut?
Why are they re-inventing the wheel?"
    Well, it turned out the hole for the pedal prop was just a
bit small, and it only appeared to have the prop threaded into
it.  Didn't have a drill with me, so I reamed the hole a bit
larger with a rat-tail file, and presto, everything back to
normal!
    --David Nereson, RPT
  -----Original Message-----
  From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org
[mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org]On Behalf Of piannaman at aol.com
  Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 7:59 AM
  To: pianotech at ptg.org
  Subject: Ya gotta laugh...


  Yesterday, I did a warranty tuning on a Yamaha P-2.  The piano
was in great shape, at pitch, everything in place, no broken
spring cords.  I went to adjust the pedal and found that the
wing not wouldn't go far enough down the pedal bolt to take out
the excess play.  Inspection showed that someone had wanted to
"secure" their fine pedal adjustment by wrapping many layers of
masking tape around the threads.

  I removed the wing nut, pulled the bolt down and scraped off
as much tape as I could.  I couldn't find the felt punching that
had rolled away when I undid the nut, so I replaced it with a
spare Wurzen punching I had in my kit.  Put it all back
together, and found that I couldn't adjust the pedal so that I
was getting enough lift OR adequate damper seating.

  Everything seemed in perfect order.  I removed the action to
look for loose pedal rod brackets.  Nada.  Futzed around with
adjustment.  Still nada.

  After about ten minutes of exasperation, I ran a screwdriver
through the pedal mortise over the top of the pedal.  Out popped
the missing punching, which had been pressing down on the pedal
the whole time!

  Mondays have been an adventure lately.

  Dave Stahl

  Dave Stahl Piano Service
  650-224-3560
  dstahlpiano at sbcglobal.net
  http://dstahlpiano.net/





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