hammer travel

[Porritt, David]

20 plus years ago I was in a class at the Steinway dealer led by a tech
from Hamburg who said they did travel hammers to the strings there at
that time.

dave

David M. Porritt
dporritt at smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
Behalf Of A440A at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 10:36 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: hammer travel

 
<< While we are there, I heard that some (very respectable) technicians
do 
put a little horizontal travel (to the left) on the few lower tenor
hammers, on 
Steinway pianos.  Is this common practice ?  What is the reason therefor
? >>

Greetings,
     It is never better, but often  seen.  Steinway string spacing is an

inexact component of the piano.  It is not uncommon to have the lowest
two or 
three tenor hammers to be spaced far to the left of their whippen
cushions, simply 
to hit the strings, (whose agraffe drilling may have spread leftward
when 
drilled, or maybe the holes in the rails, or the bridge. Whatever, the 
consistancy of Steinway string spacing is low).  
    Sometimes it is expeditious to allow the lowest hammers to travel in

order to minimize the requiste mis-alignment that hammer spacing
requires. 
    Another reason is to allow the hammers to clear, if the rake angle
is too 
severe for hammer to hammer clearance.  
      Another thing to think about is that the factory doesn't seem to 
consider traveling hammers to be a problem, and often use the traveling
to 
accommodate inconsistant string spacing to an even hammer spacing at
rest.  Appearances 
are important and this seems to be a case of appearance taking priority
over 
performance.  Maybe a little mis-alignment is no problem, but it seems
that 
pinning problems occur more often in these situations, and if the hammer
is 
moving sideways, does it flex under hard blows?  Is traveling a voicing
issue?  
Pinning is. 
Regards, 
 
Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html