Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Damper regulation on Steinway upright

I posted this earlier under a different topic but it may have gotten buried.

I am in the process of regulating the dampers on my circa 1896 Steinway upright after having replaced felts. The action is in good mechanical shape otherwise and the felts line up OK. It looks as though this process is different for Steinway than other pianos. Rather than bending wires, it looks like the adjusting screws at the base of the damper lever do the trick. I’m assuming this is done with the action out of the piano. Is part of the regulating process done with the action inside the piano? If the damper lift rod is used as the benchmark for regulating, where and how should it be set? In other words how the heck do I do this?

Thanks!

In the typical SS upright the damper and hammer shares a common flange. Change hammer/string alignment and damper/string alignment changes and visa-v.
I would bend wires and regulate while the action is in the piano.
Set a couple of samples that the rod will pick up the damper about halfway through the hammer travel and make the others the same.
then do some spoon bending to get the dampers to lift with the keys about the same.

Old Steinway vertical actions did not use spoons. If there are screws, this piano is one of them.

Yes. This is an upright Steinway without spoons (has non-adjustable glued wooden tongues). I was able to successfully regulate dampers to the sustain bar using the adjusting screws at the damper base. All dampers move simultaneously with the bar. However, with the action in the piano, it appears to be too close to the strings. The bass dampers have almost no travel. I can pull the action back about 1/2 inch and they work. Yet, it can't go in any other way and the felts do not displace greater space than the old ones. There were no removable spacers where the action attaches. Any clues on this one?

Thanks!

About the only solution I can see is to adjust the damper wires to that they lift correctly with the spoons (compound bends) and then re-adjust the screws so that the dampers lift correctly with the pedal. This would be the opposite of how dampers are usually adjusted.

But again, there are no spoons. There is a rigid wooden piece where the spoon will be on later pianos, and a screw in the back of the lever that pushes the action cloth where it hits.

This is the way I would do it (short of replacing lots of action parts):

Regulate everything else in the piano as well as you can make it.

Regulate the damper wires so the dampers lift evenly with the pedal. Then see how the dampers lift when you press the keys. Set a few samples so they are good by trial and error, in all sections of the scale. Clamp a wood strip that will stop the hammers at the half-way distance to the strings. Take the action out of the piano, and clamp it so you can work on it vertically. Use the sample notes to establish a line for the dampers when the wippen is lifted until the hammer is stopped by strip, and then adjust the other dampers to match.

I will give it a try. Thanks for the info and I'll let you know how it goes.

Worked like a charm! I followed your advice and some ABCs on regulating from Reblitz. The piano sounds better than it has since I've owned it and the action feels like new.

Mike