Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum measure of touch weight on my upright

You should have show us first ! you did the nap the good direction I suppose. How thick is your rest cushion (you did not put any ?)

We are left with a too thin cushion, too large hammer travel distance etc. Is "heavyness" during letoff, at the beginning of stroke, or within acceleration (that last is normal for a pianino, but it is what makes playing them a little controllable)

45 grs is normal as probably 80 - the heavyness is then due to the too large key dip, lack of clear stopping of the keys, backcheck wire under stress, etc.

The butts where leather originally, even if red colored. those leather qualities we dont have today. I dont see "plenty" just some of them and rarely, in fact.

Nice leather on the hammers (?) how do that tones ?

if you feel the key mortise rubbing strong when you push sideways on the key while lowering it, bushings and pins have to be done.

Chopin, the green part probably should be there. It is called a butt pad and is a normal part of hammer butts and holds the jack in the right position under the butt. Without it, the jack will be have to drag against the butt at letoff time and cause a heavy feel. If it is too thick then the jack will slip out prematurely and decrease power. Somebody may have replaced the original butt pads some time ago - they are very tasty to some insects! I see that you have covered the butt with material all the way where the butt pad should be. I am not sure if that is correct for this instrument.

Having new material covering the jack cams does not necessarily mean that it will slide well. I suggest that you try other materials and see what works best. Experiment with materials out of the piano. Try without any material as well, i.e. bare wood.

Heaviness is also caused by the dampers being adjusted so that they operate too soon. The principle is the same on modern pianos. There should be a lost-motion gap of 4 to 5 mm between the doughnut at the bottom end of the damper wire and the lifter on the whippen so that the lifter engages the doughnut about half way though the key dip. This is adjusted by loosening the damper wire so that is can rotate, and then rotating enough times to create the correct gap. Each time you rotate you may have to lift it out of the whippen by flexing it.

Thanks guys I really appreciate the time you are taking. I am determined to get this piano to a touch Chopin would have been happy with - and that's light!

Chris, I'm sure more or less every upright has that 'pad'. Pleyel invented a cam system instead. If you ask me it's just another place for friction - that's why many years ago a tech added the green felt.


Kamin, I'm reading your post carefully.

Kamin, If you mean this I left them on:



The nap - yes. I consulted the guy (also a restorer) who supplied it to me.

The touch is heavy from the top all the way down but I don't sense it being that stiff. It feels like you're moving quite a large weight.

"Nice leather on the hammers (?) how do that tones ?" I'm not sure what that means. The hammers are felt. Would they be leather in Chopin's day?

no
no the green cushion , too much drag withot it .

That's really a surprise. I am 100% sure that's not original.

I think Chris is correct about the butt felt. Without it, you probably get more friction from the jack moving against the leather as the button presses on the letoff cam. You could put a piece in and compare the touch before and after. But I also think the entire project is putting lipstick on a pig.

Ah, but one of Chopin's favourite pigs! The cam should do the job and I'm assuming Pleyel knew what they were doing. I take your point BDB but the octave I've worked on (and removed the cushions) seems no worse than the other octaves with them. The cam sure looks like a crazy idea though.

Kamin, I'd assumed France is littered with Pianinos. Are you sure they have cushions? When taken off I'm sure I can tell nothing was there originally.

Thanks again for helping me think this through. I realize now that from the very inception of key descent it's heavy - you feel you're starting to move quite a load. Even though on my modern quality upright, with hammers about as heavily felted, there is far less yet I can't help thinking it's a hammer problem. If the end-of-the-key to pivot pin key length is too short (which I think it may be) then would that explain it? Was my Pianino designed for small leather hammers but the design then got over burdened with bigger felt ones? There's plenty of stress indicated on the butt flanges to think that.

The cam only works at letoff moment, for me, so the parts have yet some speed,

You make me have doubt, but the cam is just another mean to letoff, and the cushion avoid noise. I will try to be sure.

Think also about orientation of force at rest and during stroke.

How much hammer travel do you have ?
Take care of the nap..

I think it's designed to be in permanent contact until letoff - yes, plenty of scope for extra friction there! But as I've said - the key is heavy from inception (i.e. from the very first mm of descent) even on those where the cam isn't in contact (ones with the cushion left in place).

Yes really small and leather covered hammers even if they used felt later certainly not as much as on a modern one, may be half or 2/3 of what you see on a 1m tall vertical.

See also how action position is vs keys, not easy, may be your restorer knows how to evalluate this.

Ignore what I said about the damper wires. Yours has a different a different mechanism to what I described.

Key travel is about 50mm.

Yes birdcage, but I can easily disconnect individual dampers. It's not them.

looks like that (did not find more original pics)

http://francepiano.blogspot.fr/

look at the keyboard work.

hammer travel (probably) around 40 mm, key dip around 8.5 mm
Your hammer shanks looks really slanted. the direction of the wood of the butt show the direction of hammer after letoff

http://www.google.fr/imgres?um=1&hl=fr&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:fr:official&biw=1680&bih=918&tbm=isch&tbnid=E-u-wXD_L3zzqM:&imgrefurl=http://pianinopleyel.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html&docid=4cgjNSmhvJJWzM&imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KUiRBeWqZGA/STuw2-O9I4I/AAAAAAAAAOA/lUZtxeE_kSw/s400/cristofori%252Bpleyel%252B.jpg&w=400&h=300&ei=AdpeUMjBK5Cp0AWkooCADA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=957&vpy=155&dur=706&hovh=193&hovw=258&tx=190&ty=99&sig=113255324596492773423&page=1&tbnh=129&tbnw=172&start=0&ndsp=40&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0,i:83

Thanks for the great links. Here's my middle C hammer:

Hammer travel 50mm, presumably. What is key dip to let off? If the weight of the hammers in the Pleyel and your modern upright are similar, mechanics suggest the problem is friction unless the Pleyel has a much higher action ratio.

FWIW, what I would do is to go through everything from key to hammer for one or sample notes, step by step, starting with the keys, and using the modern upright for comparison where possible.

Perhaps you have already done that.

looks acceptable, possibly on heavy side. But the jack to butt relation at rest looks strange to me, I noticed that yet on one I tuned, once , indeed you cannot raise the whippen so much so hammer travel is dictated by whatever position you have, but the original position with the green cushion is more normal that what I can imagine without it (think of the lever between hammer center and the top of the jack)
How muck key dip is ?

The piano is easy because little key dip and small hammer travel, to me, not because of the action.

Pianists need also some braking to play, if the note is too easy you cannot play as you wish.

Definitively it cannot be well located without a cushion, then understand why the center of the jack is pushing so much on the edge of the butt, it should be more on the under cloth (which I imagine is just a small white cloth there to adbsorb the initial impact, then the edge of the butt is possibly less far because the under cloth is goes farther, to the edge of the wood.)

That rounded nose would be useful if the jack could push on it from below, as it is not the case, something is wrong.

With 50 mm hammer travel any vertical would be heavy, but I am not sure it is so short as 40 mm. sure the keys are less than 9 mm dip.

Did you change the action center ? if not first source of friction is there.