Hi there

In my 5-years old S4, the damper of middle C4# is not sitting well on the left hand side string. After much hours of work my yamaha trained technician, could only correct it partially, i.e. staccato is only staccato when playing pp, p, mp od mf. Beginning with forte, the left hand string continues vibrating for a while. Two other dampers also present this tendency.
Do you think that glueing new felts will do the trick?
My technician told me he would need en entire set of felts, looking at an overall cost of 3000 EUR, to guaranteed solve the issue.
Now, and as I have a very bitter experience with the gentlemen of Rellingen, do you think there is an affordable and efficient way to get rid of that?
I suspect very bad quality of felts for the whole construction as I also hear other noises - yet almost unheard - coming from the action.

kind regards
(amateur pianist with 4hours daily practice)
ak

That is an absurdly high price for replacing the damper felts, and such problems can usually be fixed by bending the wire or filing the felt.

Sure,

While I have no idea what Rellingen is I recommend locating another technician that does not want to charge $3900.00 US funds to change out 3 damper felts.

Although I am not privy to the market conditions for service in your area of the world, a tuning service with this repair included, should be less than 300.00€

Just because the technician is "Yamaha trained", it doesn't mean that he is good at dampers. I went through the Yamaha training back in 1998, and they didn't spend much time on dampers, other than basic adjustment. The overall focus of the program is regulation of the entire action.
In contrast, Steinway & Sons has a 5 day training that focuses only on the damper system.

Why on earth would he want to replace the whole set because 3 have a problem? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! This does not sound right at all. Please get a second opinion.

Dampers require quite a bit of understanding and finesse. If you are inexperienced with dampers it is easy to make them worse than better. If it is just the left hand string of a trichord note that is ringing, chances are it is a head bend and that the damper is not centered appropriately over the strings. Also the "legs" of the wedges can be spread by using thin cotton yarn or string. Sometimes you can cut the wedges deeper. There are any number of tricks to get a damper to work properly. It could even be a sluggish damper flange that needs to be repinned.

Good luck with your piano!

The Rellingen gentlemen, I gather, refers to Yamaha Europe's head office in Germany and "their" people.

You don't have to be Yamaha trained to fix a damper problem on an S4. But you have to know your way around grand dampers.

If no one local can get rid of the ringing, I suggest bringing in someone from nearby France or Germany - Strasbourg, Metz, Mainz, Saarbrücken etc.

If all else fails, I'll fly in from Canada to fix it for less than the EUR 3000 you have been quoted!

From a practical point of view as you are living in Luxenurg you could try Marcus Huebner in Trier Germany: not too far off and very good reputation as technician and Yamaha dealer:

Marcus Huebner

An alternative for an independant German top technician - although a bit further off and some extra travelling charge- would be Marek Korczak near Düsseldorf:

Marek Korczak

schwammerl.

I agree with everything everyone has said. Great advice above. The technician that is currently working on your piano obviously, cannot fixing something that after many hours of working on should have been solved. Once you know your way around dampers, which is not easy, they can always be a bit tricky, solving the problem then becomes a matter of knowing what to do next. Whatever you do, don't replace all of them if the others are not a problem.

It sounds like the tech couldn't/didn't want to deal with it, so he gave a wild quote, hoping you would either go elsewhere or actually agree and come up with the money!

Yes, Rellingen is the european HQ. Thank you all gentlemen, merci beaucoup, auch an Jürgen, the proposal to fly here was excellent and made my day (with -12 Celsius here and humidifier running all day).

kind regards
AK