[pianotech] Damper Puzzler

[Garret Traylor]

Warped damper tray and loose guide rail? Hummmm...

 

Kindest Regards,

Garret 

---

Garret Traylor - President

High Point Piano & Music Inc.

88-PIANO (336) 887-4266

P Go Green! Print this email only when necessary. Thank you for helping High
Point Music be environmentally responsible.

 

From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Joe DeFazio
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 2:01 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: [pianotech] Damper Puzzler

 

Here is a puzzler I encountered last week.  Someone may get it right away,
but it took me some head scratching to figure out, and I had never seen it
before:

 

The piano was a circa 1930 generic little american grand.  I was called in
to repair the lyre (the regular tuner is blind and does not do that type of
repair work).  Of course, assessing damper function was part of the job, and
it was reasonably OK except for the puzzler:

 

Whenever I depressed the sustain pedal (after repairing the lyre) two
adjacent bass bichords sounded, as if they had been plucked.  However, when
I reached inside and lifted either or both of the underlevers by hand, there
was no plucking sound.  

 

Just to rule out some things, the underlever leads and flanges were tight,
the guide rail bushings were worn but not terrible, and the damper wires
were not touching or almost touching the strings.  The damper heads and
felts were not interfering with their neighbors.  The damper felts were old,
but no more so than their quiet neighbors.  There was no sostenuto
mechanism.  That's where I was when my head scratching commenced, as shall
yours, if you're in an itchy frame of mind.

 

Joe DeFazio

Pittsburgh

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