Interesting that you bring that up as I had a situation arise recently with a new customer. New action, Stanwoodized, precision balancing, low inertia, all the modern stuff and a very good careful job (not by me). He hated the action. Couldn't exactly put his finger on what it was exactly: couldn't control soft playing, action felt a bit fly away, unable to articulate very fast passages. Examining the action specs I found that the action had a nice balance weight (36), smooth friction readings, everything seemed in order. However, the dip was deep, around .425" with minimal aftertouch at 1.75" blow. Bottom line, the leverage had been set low enough to be able to accommodate a fairly heavy strike weight with low leading and low balance weight. The result, excessive key dip creating the feeling of a lack of control, late bottoming out of the key, difficult in articulating rapid passage work. The fix (without major surgery), reduce the key dip to .390 and decrease the blow distance to about 1.5". Because of the relatively heavy SWs the piano doesn't want for power but the other complaints seem resolved (at least for now). Something to keep in mind when determining priorities especially in ordering issues of weight before issues of regulation. There's always a trade-off. You pay the piper one way or the other. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com A Steinway that regulates properly with 1.5" of blow is a curiousity to me. What sort of dip and let-off would you have? Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
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