Adjustment of vertical mechanical dampers

Member

Posts: 16
City: grosseto

June 25, 2014, 15:46

Hello!

I have followed Maestro Paolo Ferrarelli's video lessons with great interest and wanted to congratulate you on the enormous contribution you are giving us so that we can understand and know everything about how the instrument works. Such precious, precise, and exhaustive information is not easily found (or rather, cannot be found). Thanks to these videos, I have begun to understand what the technical problems are regarding the sensations and dissatisfactions one may experience when playing one's own instrument.

In these last few days, after replacing the grooved felt of a damper (which was preventing a key from returning up), I found myself attempting to regulate the dampers in order to remove various noises, annoying harmonics, and "reverb effects" that resonate throughout my entire instrument. But, besides not having the right tools (it would be interesting to see a video lesson about them), I think I have gone too far beyond my technical abilities (which are non-existent) and have made a bit of a mess. In the video where the regulation of upright action is discussed, everything is explained in depth and is very understandable, but Maestro Ferrarelli stops exactly when he should have talked about how to perform a good regulation of the damper spoons and rods, leaving me hanging.

The work you are doing is exceptional and I understand that filming and editing a video tutorial is not a five-minute job and, precisely because of this, it is equally difficult to find the time and make it fit with a thousand other commitments.

Thank you all! Keep it up!!!

pianoexpert

Moderator

Posts: 3,876
City: rocca di papa

June 28, 2014, 22:30

Thanks on behalf of the entire staff for the compliments. After all, regulating the dampers is difficult, tricky, and thankless work. Tiring! Many things can change from instrument to instrument. First of all, checking the correctness of the spring tension. Then the felts, which may have hardened (especially in the bass). The bass notes in particular can reveal some resonance!! Therefore, perfect centering!! The dampers must be adjusted so that the damper leaves the strings at about half the hammer stroke. The rods, on the other hand, act heavily on the pedal release. Therefore, they must be twisted depending on the non-simultaneous release when acting on the pedal. (be careful not to twist the iron at the top and bottom in order to maintain the parallelism of the felt with respect to the strings. Every minimal error will correspond to a "slap" that the string produces when the felt does not touch the strings simultaneously along its entire length). Anything else??? I would say work with patience and experiment.