Wim,
It's not like the other La Petite grands I have seen. Those were smaller than this one. Yeah, they're musical furniture. This one seems to be a little better than that. Now I'm curious about whether other Kimball grands might have this type of action.
Del,
This does not have any rubber in it. No leather anywhere either--just felt for rollers and some kind of felt looking stuff on backchecks. My first thought was that it was a clever design because it's a lot easier to access and remove the wippens. Poorly done by Kimball is correct.
I replaced the wippen cushions. They had very deep divots. Just doing that helped things a lot. It is regulating, although I'm not being super careful with the regulation.
This job was somewhat plagued from the first. The first day at the church (47 miles away) I forgot to bring my action cart so I had to work with it using the keybed support that Pianotek sells. Then I only had a straight capstan tool with me, and it's impossible to regulate the capstans close to the brackets without removing the stack. So I did that. Drilled three holes in capstans (per Alan Eder's suggestion) and broke two bits. Gave that up and removed the stack again. Found an angled capstan tool at home later that night, and used that yesterday. It works fine. Turning the capstans is tedious and time-consuming because there just isn't much room. The jacks are in the way. One broke, and it was a pain to glue it. Of course it split when I repinned it. In the end, it got CA and a too-loose pin through the birdseye. And swapped repetition levers with one on the end. The jacks don't like being regulated being lined up with the roller core as in other actions. I learned that only after regulating all the jacks and setting rep lever height. Half the jack skipped out on even soft blows. So I had to go back and redo it. Had to learn how the rep spring work, and it took a good bit of time to regulate spring strength. (Don't you love how experience gives you the test first and the learning later???)
Many delays, some my fault and some the fault of the piano. Today I'm going back, and should finish. All I have to do is regulate back checks a little higher, set damper lift, check pedals, tune and voice. Totally looking forward to being finished, and almost wish I never had this experience. That money is still green, albeit much less per hour now. But it does play better already. Hopefully they will notice the difference and I get referrals.
One thing I have definitely learned is to look at an action before giving a quote. T
his was kind of an off-the-cuff quote at the first appointment I ever had at this church. I gave a ballpark figure after tuning it, and then they wanted the work done 6 months later. I'm not sure I even looked at the action at the first tuning appointment. It didn't play well, so I said to the music director that it needs reconditioning and regulation to go from 40% function to maybe 85%. Lesson learned, and experience for the next time.
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John Formsma, RPT
New Albany MS
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-13-2018 02:23
From: Delwin Fandrich
Subject: Kimball grand action--what kind is it?
Ah, yes, the wonderful La Petite compact grand action. Very clever design, very poorly executed. The regulating screws were entirely inappropriate for their function. They used crappy foam rubber where decent leather and/or felt would have been much more appropriate. But the idea was great!
In a very short grand -- and the La Petite was nothing if not short -- proportions are important. Using a standard grand actions would have made the piano even uglier than ti already was. Hence the development of an entirely new action design.
I've several of these actions over the years. The biggest problem is the screw going through the jack. The working end is entirely too small -- it digs into the foam rubber piece stuck in there as a cushion. I don't know what is available today, but back in the late 1970s and early 1980s regulating screws were available from Pratt-Read that worked quite well as a replacement. The working end -- the tip that actually rested on the cushion -- was about twice as large as the original. The foam whatever was removed and leather pieces were installed in their place.
I don't remember the repetition springs being that much of a problem. I'd have to check, but i think the later versions had a screw in the repetition lever that the end of the spring set into. Without that screw, what you're doing now is probably the only way to adjust the thing.
Plan on replacing all of the felts and cushions. The stuff Kimball used was atrocious. The trade-off is a little action noise in exchange for action stability and reliability.
Done well these actions worked reasonably well. As produced by Kimball they were crap.
ddf
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Delwin D Fandrich
Fandrich Piano Company, Inc.
Piano Design and Manufacturing Consulting Services -- Worldwide
6939 Foothill Ct SW -- Olympia, WA 98512 -- USA
Phone 360.515.0119 -- Mobile 360.388.6525
Original Message------
I'm regulating one of these little beauties (heavy on the sarcasm). Is this a Schwander grand action?
Piano is from the 1970's, I think. I haven't checked the serial number yet, but 1977 is stamped on the action.
Click this link to see the images in the Library.
The action stack weighs almost nothing compared to a traditional stack. It has square steel capstans like an upright. The wippens attach to the rail directly underneath the hammer shanks. Repetition springs can be adjusted (fine adjustment only) with a small screw on top of the lever. The screw is hollowed out on the bottom to hold one end of the spring. The other end hooks into a loop that is attached to the jack. Many of the springs were way too strong, and I did not see any way to regulate them other than removing the wippen and weakening the spring. It definitely adds a layer of complexity. To strengthen the spring a lot, the entire spring had to come out. It's pretty easy to do, but hard to guess exactly how strong it needs to be, Which meant multiple attempts on some. I'm assuming the factory had some kind of gauge to measure the spring strength to avoid having to remove the wippens each time. ???
Regulation seems pretty straightforward, but jack to roller core is further back than typical. There is a good bit of action wear, so maybe this is because of that wear?
This job has been challenging. Interesting, to say the least. And I'll be very glad when this job is finished.
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John Formsma, RPT
New Albany MS
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