1890's Everett upright

[Ed Sutton]

When bass hammers on diagonal strings are reshaped, they become shorter. 
They strike lower, and thus more to the left. The angle you mention may have 
been necessary for clearance when the hammers were larger.
It's also possible that the action has dropped a little on the bass end.
And it may be possible to raise the action a little bit on the bass end and 
improve the hammer/string alignment.

Ed Sutton

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Voigt" <jvoigt at gwtc.net>
To: "pianotech" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 9:11 PM
Subject: 1890's Everett upright


  Also, in the bicord section most
> of the hammers were striking to the left of where they should.  At best,
> they would hardly strike the right string.  At worst, they would slightly
> strike the string of the next lower note.  Alignment on the tricords and
> monocords was good.  Heating shanks and moving them to the right caused 
> them
> to get hung up on a neighboring hammer.  Trying to loosen the hammer 
> flange
> screw and retighten it in position was fruitless.  Oh yeah, someone
> previously filed the hammers at an angle so that even if the hammers were
> aligned properly, they would probably still only strike the left string.
>
> Questions:  Is there a fix for the hammers other than filing the hammers 
> and
> replacing the shanks?
> Has anyone else ever experinced a situation with the plate being so close 
> to
> the strings?  It is a shame that this piano has features that make
> regulation and repair easy, but make tuning difficult.
>
> John Voigt
> Avon, SD
>
>
>