Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Bad Repeating on Baldwin Hamilton

I recently bought a 1998 Baldwin Hamilton which seems to be in great shape. However there's a problem with repeating notes. Repeating quickly works quite well, but when you slow down to a certain speed they start missing. You can see the action in this video: I'm playing 16th note octaves and at a certain speed the notes, especially the lower one, start to miss every other hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRk6HYlJaXE&feature=youtu.be

This seems to happen across the keyboard although I haven't thoroughly tested to see if it's worse in certain areas. It is quite a pain on things like trills, or the sixteenth notes from the video which are part of a study I'm trying to play.

I had a tuner come by and mentioned this to him, and he agreed it was very annoying, but that this was just the nature of this type of piano. Is he right? I'd always heard that Hamiltons are well-regarded, and I'd be surprised if they all had as serious a problem as this. Thanks for any info you can provide.

The first thing to check is whether the hammer butt spring is in place. Beyond that, it could be tight center pin joints, which take some time to fix

Thanks for the tips BDB. If anything though this appears to be a problem with something being too loose, as opposed to tight.

Upon striking a single staccato, the hammer does a fair bit of bouncing back and forth as it settles down. If you time the repeat to fall at the wrong part of this "bounce", that's how the missed note happens.

My bigger question though is in regards to what my tuner told me: is this sort of behaviour expected on this piano, or is he incorrect and a fix should be possible?

An improvement should be possible.

center pin offset
the skin peeled off from a butt
low capstan
good lucks,

Thanks very much folks, appreciate it.

El Sordo,

As usual there is a degree of truth in your techs answer. However, as mentioned, there is also probably a degree of improvement possible (though you will never get flawless repetition out of it). It has 20 years of usage on it and requires thorough attention by someone who understands the action.

Edit: Some drummers know how to tune and maintain their drums, whereas other "drummers" simply bang away.

Pwg