Here's a big oops has just occurred.
It's common to level keys a smidge higher than they were before leveling, because (a) it's easier and faster to add balance-rail punchings than to remove them, and (b) the full-keyboard straight-edge works best when you can see the gaps, i.e. when the straight-edge lies slightly above the level of most or all the intervening keys. So we block up keys 1 and 88, rest a straight-edge on the end keys, and proceed to raise all the intervening keys to the newly correct height.
Which (on a grand) slightly affects hammer height, because raising the key also raises the capstan a tiny bit. On a vertical, it affects lost motion. That's why we level keys before setting blow.
So on this Yamaha C3 grand, I raised the key height and proceeded to do a full regulation at my shop, then returned the action to its piano a couple of days ago, and everything works beautifully, letoff is exactly right, aftertouch is perfect, and the tuning was great. I explained to the client what work I had done, put the piano back together and left happy.
Only to get the following email that night:
"Nice seeing today and thank you for your beautiful work - the piano sounds great! One, hopefully minor, problem - we noticed that when closing or opening the fall-board on the keyboard, it pushes all the keys down, making the keys uneven and very shallow. Can you please take a look at that when you come to tune the other piano? It did not happen before, probably since the keys were all a little lower."
In my initial measurements, I had neglected to check fallboard clearance. Now I have to fix that, at no cost to the client. Note to self: Don't make that mistake again.
I don't know how much clearance is needed. Easiest option would be to replace the fallboard felt with something thinner, if that would suffice. More likely I will have to re-level the keys, both naturals and sharps. Maybe replacing the balance rail felt punchings with thinner ones would do the trick, or maybe just removing x or y paper punchings, but of course after any such gang replacement, a fine-tuning of the level will be necessary.
It will be at least four or five days before I go back to fix this.
What would you do?
------------------------------
| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || |||
Jason Kanter
Lynnwood WA
425-830-1561
------------------------------