Well, for any of you who have been reading my posts I am up to step 9 in Reblitz for action regulation. The only problems I ran into are that my back check regulator didn't fit so I had to use needle nose only and a lot of care. So I do some of the tests for checking for lost motion that he suggests and when I do the one for moving the hammer rail to see that all the hammers move I discover that almost all of the top 20 keys or so are not resting on the rail as they should. My quesion is the upper keys should be the same as the rest right? I mean they don't adjust them this way to give them a different feel or something?

Lost motion is taken out by adjusting the capstans. They do need to be adjusted fairly often. They often go out in the higher registers, where you do more playing.

Ok Never mind. Its amazing what happens when you put the action in correctly lmao

I have been reading reblitz and this is one area I'm not sure if I would have the correct 'feel' for. Every key seems to respond immediate to very light pressure so I'm not sure if I should adjust or just leave it alone.

There should be a hair's width of lost motion. You may find that with seasonal humidity changes the lost motion changes from positive to negative. You can learn how to adjust with enough lost motion that no matter what the season it won't go negative on you. Which means that in some seasons it may be slightly more lost motion than ideal. But it's better than customers calling you because the action is not functioning right seasonally. Slightly too much lost motion doesn't generate complaints, but negative lost motion does.

I hope by "negative lost motion" you don't mean the wippen moves before the key! :-)

--Cy--
(always thinking mathematically)

Haha, no just that the jack (at rest) is propping the hammer slightly forward at rest, which can lead to repetition problems. Positive lost motion means you have some lost motion (good if slight), negative means you don't.

Hey, Brick, that makes perfect sense. I never thought about it that way. Good description.

--Cy--

A quick way to check for lost motion on a vertical piano is to pull the hammer rail towards you slightly. If the hammers move back with the rail, you have lost motion. If they don't move back, you might want to add some lost motion.

To check for clearance between the jack top and hammer butt, depress the sustain pedal, play a note, release the key very slowly and watch what the jack does when it returns. If it drags slightly or doesn't go back all the way, lower the capstan little by little until it does.

Tom