Dull Thunk

Although the main issues were taken care of, so the keys all made a sound, some of them didn't make the same sound as the others. Instead of a nice, resonant thrum, you got a dull thunk.

After taking advice from Steve at Howard Piano Industries, and poking about a bit more, I came to the conclusion it was most likely the damper spoons. Each note has a damper, which dampens (stops) the sound of the string. This lifts up when you hit a note and goes back afterwards - unless you have your foot on the sustain pedal so that the sound sustains and does not stop.

On a few of the notes, the damper didn't appear to lift when I hit the note. This meant that the string couldn't vibrate fully, to give the rounded sound you want.

For this, I needed a regulating toolkit, this time from Howard Piano Industries rather than eBay. 

A few weeks later it arrived, and I had yet another bag of mysteries to unfold.

The other exciting part was learning to remove the action. All of the hammers are held together along a frame above the keys. This is called the action and you can take the whole frame out. Getting it back in again is slightly more tricky.

Once it's out, it's much easier to work on the damper spoons because it's hard to get the tool between the keys and to see what you're moving on the other side. But I've now learnt to do this, and to adjust the let off pins.

This has fixed the problem with all but two of the keys, which need further investigation. So, Lirika is now sounding pretty good.

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