Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Stupid spring rail question...

Ok, here is the next clueless question...

I'm in the middle of replacing all the damper felts on my 1918 Hobart M. Cable upright. As part of this, I removed all the damper levers from the action so I could inspect their felts, and the damper rod felts, etc.

While doing so, I noticed that the spring rail has felt spacers at its mounting points on the two treble action brackets, but none on the two tenor/bass brackets. In addition, a loose felt spacer was found sitting on top of the damper lever flanges right at the tenor action bracket - like it was intended to be installed but wasn't.

Should I back the tenor/bass spring rail screws out of the action bracket and install the "missing" felt spacers or is this some mystic way of getting slightly more tension on the bass hammers? The spacers look like thin front rail felts...

Appreciate any advice if this babble makes any sense!

Thanx!

You should replace the hammer springs to get more tension. They undoubtedly need it by now.

The reason for the spacers is for the other purpose the spring rail serves: to limit the amount of damper movement. It is not real important in uprights, but the dampers should not move back too far with a heavy blow. Depress a few keys fully, see where the damper stops, and set the bar a bit farther back from that.

You might want to consider replacing the damper springs, too.