Greetings, everyone! I work for a dealer who sells Yamaha pianos, so I've been working with Yamahas on a regular basis for many years. The chat on the list about practice mufflers has been fun, so I decided to add my two cents... To easily and comfortably remove the muffler in those instruments incorporating the "heavy duty spring" version: 1. Engage the muffler pedal so that muffler is in the down position, with felt between the hammers and strings. By having the muffler down, you can hold your screwdriver in a position closer to parallel to the keyboard, which makes it easier to control the screwdriver so that it is far less likely to "pop out" of the slot. This avoids chewing up or rounding the edges of the screwhead cuts, which makes future removals difficult. 2. Use a slot screwdriver to loosen screw about 6 or 7 turns so that the muffler rail can be easily lifted up and out. Be sure that the slot screwdriver is a good fit. Do not remove the screw completely; leave two or three of the screw threads protruding out the backside of the bracket. If the screw is very tight, deftly apply a drop of liquid Protek to the screw threads behind the bracket. This will also facilitate easier removal in the future. Please note that there is a sort of dimple fit to ensure the proper alignment of the rail to the bracket. This is important when reinstalling the rail. 3. After lifting the bass end up out of the bracket, remove the treble end, keeping an eye on the green felt punching, which may fall off and be difficult to find. I usually glue that punching to the rail to avoid the chance of losing the punching ever again. "Fabri-Tac" fabric glue is great for this application, drying quickly to ensure that the punching doesn't fall off when reinstalling the muffler. 4. Reverse the above to reinstall. If you hear a buzz while tuning, it's probably the bass bracket screw/washers. If it really bugs you, just put a little piece of masking tape on it... Please consider using the above procedure. Over several years of removing the bracket with the muffler, the hole drilled in the sideboard can become distorted, and may even lead to the bracket working it's way out, which leads to a phone call from the customer! It's also important to be sure that the customer (usually children) knows that the practice muffler is not to be used as an expression tool. Kids like to work the pedal up and down while playing! JB (<: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100507/939d8aea/attachment.htm>
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