The fun videos they show on YouTube showing how easily and quickly issues with key dip can be corrected have a dirty little secret. They always show somebody happily sitting fixing the natural keys. They never show someone working on the sharps. And now I know why -- you can't see them, you can't reach them, they're nearly impossible to measure correctly and you have to get down on your hand and knees to work on them.
That's what I learned this past Thursday.
Since I don't own the fancy Jaras sharp key dip/leveler device I figured out a way to jury rig my own tool with a t-square with a level built in. That's twice now that tool has turned into a handy solution for getting around the purchase of expensive tools from piano supply places. McGiver I'm not; but it is occasionally gratifying to figure out an alternative solution.
Once I knew out how to measure the sharp key dip accurately (I still don't get this "you'll feel it" stuff), I nonetheless had to resort to long needle nose pliers, rigging up lights and getting down on my hands and knees to reach in pull out the felts, put in the proper number of punchings and replace the felts. Thank goodness there aren't as many sharps. It took about four hours and my body simply ached in places I didn't even know I had when finished.
On the other hand, the Zelda's touch and response has improved immensely. There's much more control in almost every respect. Next steps will be regulating the action behind the keys and ultimately voicing.
After I finished putting her back together, I decided to give Zelda a quick tune. Moving the action in and out constantly has destabilized her a bit. The quick clean up turned into a major retune. I finished up at 1:30 am Friday. Even though I was exhausted from the 17 hour day, I couldn't help but playing her for a while afterwards. She, once again, sounds even more fabulous. Each step in the regulating process brings out a different nuance hidden in her bones.
Speaking of tuning; Friday evening I had my first paid tuning job for Donna Roll's Young Artists series hosted here in Key West. They've moved locations and the pianos at the new location have been (to be kind) neglected over the years. The one I worked on Friday hadn't been tuned since 1980. Not only was it out of tune with itself -- it was on average 75 cents flat throughout the piano -- not exactly something you teach young artists with. It took a while -- five hours -- to clean it up, raise the pitch and then finally tune it. But despite its years of of neglect was sounding pretty good last evening when finished. I'll go back in about a week to see how stable it is and give it another fine tuning.
Tomorrow after church, I'll tackle another of their instruments. Hopefully, it won't be quite as neglected. Nonetheless, working on these kind of instruments is probably the best way to get the experience I need.
By the way, back to Zelda, did I mention before I replaced any of the front rail felts, I polished out each front rail pin to help improve the key action? (see photo) Yet another of those many subtle steps needed to achieve a more beautiful sound.
Need to get to bed so I can be alert to handle tomorrow's tuning challenges --and whatever else the day may bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment