Hammer replacement

A new hammer rail involves many tasks performed with expertise, not least a check of the new keyboard regulation. I wouldn't touch anything. Especially since the piano seems new to me. In my opinion, it depends on something that is being overlooked during the adjustment. I would leave the original one as it is, which surely should be fully utilized.

To install the new hammer rail, it is necessary to take away the action and NEVER, I say NEVER, throw away the old one (which must be returned to the owner and must remain mounted on its staples!!!!! It's important!!!!!)

Last year I bought a new original hammer rail, it wasn't difficult since the piano is recent. So I have an identical one disassembled with shanks, knuckle, and flange still new. I was thinking of entrusting it to a good technician to have new hammers installed.

Couldn't he mount it on a temporary frame to do the work?

But I wouldn't do it because your jig suggests the eventual correction of the deviation in the rise of the wippens and therefore guides the correct gluing of the heads. And then it must copy the escapement point, which is not necessarily linear. It must also copy the inclination of the hammers which, it's not guaranteed, especially in the bass, is perpendicular (the inclined hammers of the bass and at the beginning of the mids describe an arc in their rise that is the result of a mathematical relationship between the angle of the string and the drilling angle relative to the plane of rotation!!!)

Then I give up, I thought it would be simpler.

When I changed it, it was simply mounted on the piano. Just a light shaving to remove the burrs from the Martelli cut and some shim here and there to correct the rise.

I'll add that my desire to install new hammers on this one has nothing to do with the aftertouch problem mentioned in the other post. It is only to try non-Yamaha hammers on a C3..

Maybe I understand what you mean. Basically, you find yourself with two sets of hammers + shanks + capstans that are perfectly new and functional: one assembled and one not. You would like to have the Yamaha heads extracted from one of them (the disassembled one) and have perfect German reproductions glued in. This way, you would end up with two efficient, interchangeable sets. You know, I had a similar idea, but then a doubt arose: when screwing a hammer back in, am I really sure of respecting the correct inclination? In my experience, it takes very little to rotate a hammer and no longer have the same centering as before. Multiply that by 88 and by two SETS of hammers. Assuming that the regulation can work for both... If I'm not mistaken, Zimmerman had a new action built from scratch with a keyboard and mechanism perfectly identical, then varying the regulation and voicing. Well, this could be a wiser solution, but... quite expensive!!! Tampering with a mechanism every time... I don't know...

francescochopin90 wrote:

1 hour ago, francescochopin90 said:

Maybe I understood what you mean. Practically, you find yourself with two sets of hammers + shanks + repetitions perfectly new and functioning: one installed and one not. You would want to have the Yamaha heads extracted from one of the two (the disassembled one) and have perfect German reproductions glued in. This way, you would have two efficient interchangeable sets. You know, I had a similar idea too, but then a doubt arose: when reviving a hammer, am I really so sure of respecting the correct inclination? From experience, it takes very little to rotate a hammer and no longer have the same centering as before. Multiply that by 88 and by two SETS of hammer assemblies. Assuming that the regulations can work for both... If I'm not mistaken, Zimmerman had a new action frame built with keyboard and mechanism perfectly identical, then varying the regulation and voicing afterwards. Well, this could be a wiser solution, but... quite expensive!!! Tampering with a mechanism every time... I don't know...

Exactly, I have two complete and original Yamaha hammer assemblies.

One is obviously the one installed and in use, the other is the one I replaced because I didn't like it, but it is new because it hasn't been worked. I know I don't like the hammers, but the rest is usable, hence the idea.