Restoration of a Fischer Ampico grand for Jim Durfee
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235) All the capstans have been relocated. This, sadly
was not the end of the story. As I began to assemble the action and work out the
regulation with the relocated capstans, I realized that there was a general error in the
design of the Fischer action that I was actually perpetuating. The Fischer
specification for key travel is 1/32" deeper than standard. With the capstan
locations I chose, I was making this problem continue. Also, I found that I simply
wasn't getting sufficient hammer travel to get the kind of power I wanted out of this
action. In addition, my key weights were coming out much lower than my testing had
predicted. The action would have been light as a feather; too light. The
bottom line is that I had to move the capstans again. The new location enabled me to
do several very nice things for this piano. I brought the key dip to a standard
3/8" like all other pianos and I was able to increase the hammer blow distance to
that of a concert grand's. The down side is that I lost about a week of extra labor
working on redesigning this action; moving the capstans, moving the whippen, hammer and
let off rails, etc. This was all labor that I did not get paid a penny for.
The important thing was that the finished piano was right. That is always first and
foremost my main goal with each project. If I have to lose money to do that, I'll do
so in order to make everything right.
236) The location of the whippen heels were what started me on the idea of
relocating the capstans in the first place. The heels did not line up with the
original capstan location. The first relocation lined them up beautifully but
perpetuated a number of problems in the regulation. It became necessary to discard
my desire to leave the whippens unmolested. I finally chose to remove the heels and
move them back further on the capstan. The bottom line is that the action dynamics
of this piano were very strange to begin with and it took heroic steps to bring it into a
correct alignment and function.
237) Here, I am reweighing the action. A brass weight which represents the
amount of down weight I wish for that key is placed on the end of the key stick.
Then, lead weights are laid on the key and spaced to ensure that the structure of the key
will not be harmed. When one solid blow to the action rail to break friction will
cause the hammer to rise to the point of let off, then I know I have the right amount of
lead in the right places for that key. Those locations and lead sizes are then
marked on the side of the key. Later, the key will be drilled out to accept the lead
and the lead is inserted and struck to spread it out into the hole and lock it into
position. For the most part, I try to use a heavier lead that is made somewhat
shallow. These leads enable me to use a hole that doesn't go clear through the key
thus helping me to retain the key's structural integrity. A normal weigh for any
piano is 50 grams of down weight in the bass tapered off to 48 grams in the treble.
However, this action did not want to give up easily. I could not get enough up
weight in the bass if I set it for 50 grams of down weight. I must have at least 30
grams of up weight or the repetition will suffer. Up weight is defined as the amount
of weight the key can lift from the depressed position to the rest position. In
order to ensure at least 30 grams of up weight in the bass, I had to set the down weight
to 55 grams. I was still able to taper the down weight off to 48 grams in the
treble. The net result should be an action which feels fairly normal but with a
solid, somewhat heavy feeling bass.
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238) The player mechanism uses a hammer lift rail as one
technique of controlling the volume of the music. Sadly, the hammer lift rail
installed by Fischer was entirely too flimsy for the job. It flexed so badly that
the tenor and bass hammers were all the way up to their soft play position before the
treble hammers even began to move. I was aware of this from the first moment I
pulled the action from the piano. I knew that a new rail would have to be
constructed. It was an extremely difficult and challenging task. The way in
which the lift rail was mounted to the action could not be changed even though it was not
to my liking. Any change to it was impossible because of other design aspects which
had to take priority. I had already had to move the whippen rail, hammer rail and
let off rails from their original orientation in order to correct this action's poor
dynamics. I couldn't sacrifice any of these changes in order to better mount the
hammer lift rail. Therefore, the original pivot arms and mounting flanges were used.
However, I made a new quarter sawn maple rail that was glued together in two pieces
designed to reinforce and stiffen the rail. In addition, to make the whole thing
work, I had to file away parts of the backs of the whippens where some spare wood on the
whippens was causing the rail to hang up. Once the rail was working perfectly, I
relocated the original hammer rest felts onto the new rail. This felt already had
compressed areas in it where the hammers hit the rail. By lining up this felt
carefully, I was able to replace the felt onto the new rail directly under each shank as
before. This will help to stabilize the action regulation quicker as it pertains to
the hammer lift rail. The new rail is strong enough to lift the entire set of
hammers at once and in perfect line. It was a huge undertaking to make this rail
anew but well worth the results. The old rail would have seriously compromised the
quality of the reproduced music. In fact, that rail had been compromising the music
since the day it left the factory! Another item you can note in this photo is that I
had to add additional felt to the drop screw locations in order to correct a clearance
issue with the drop screws. This action was built with the rails so misaligned that
the new parts couldn't engage the drop without adding thicker felt over the tops of the
whippens drop screw contact area.
239) The various parts of the player mechanism have been reinstalled into the piano.
240) All the tubing is now in place. You will note a white piece of wood
running down the pneumatic stack cover which contains four snaps. The original board
that the vinyl action cover snapped to was missing. In fact, the entire back cover
had been replaced at some point in time and the person who replaced it neglected to
install this board. I used a piece of poplar to make a new rail. Happily, I
had the old cover in my possession so I could use it to locate the snaps exactly where
they used to be. Since the cover will completely hide this board, I didn't paint it.
Actually, I had run out of black paint as well but this was fine since the cover
would totally conceal it anyway.
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241) The new cover has been made and installed. Many
rebuilders use the original covers as patterns to make the new ones. I did have the
old cover and could have done so. However, I am able to make a much better fitting
cover if I don't bother using the original as a pattern. By a technique I have
developed, I get a perfectly fitted and taughtly stretched cover just by using the piano
itself as a guide. You'll also notice that the tubing that passes from the drawer
into the spider over the pneumatic stack has been covered with vinyl as well. This
early piano did not originally have these tubes covered. However, Ampico mechanisms
had this feature added to them by the time they had switched away from using the poppet
stacks. I feel this is a very nice improvement that they made. Since it is an
authentic thing to do because the factory did eventually come around to this idea as well,
I felt that I could safely improve this piano by adding it to the design even though it
didn't have it originally. To do this, the male ends of the snaps are screwed onto
the drawer and the stack cover in the places that the factory chose to place them later.
The vinyl is then fitted over the tubing in such a manner that it conceals all the
tubing (even the lead tubing at the back of the drawer) without interfering with the
sliding motion of the drawer in any way whatsoever. Another item you will note are
the snaps. It is customary to use black snaps to make these covers. However, I
couldn't find enough black snaps in the entire city to do the job. I had to resort
to nickel plated snaps which actually look very sharp even if they aren't exactly what was
used originally. One other item to note are the screws which hold the wooden stack
covers in place. These can be very confusing since it is hard to tell which screws
hold the covers together and which screws hold the assembly to the stack. I use a
nice little trick to help my customers in the future. I replace the black headed
screws with nickel plated screws everywhere that a screw is needed to hold the cover to
the piano. If you need to remove the front cover or the back cover, just take out
all the nickel screws and leave the black screws alone and it will come right off.
242) Behind the green cloth at the back of the key in this photo are hiding the tops
of the poppets which activate the keys. While the piano was still on its side, I
took the action apart and installed the key frame. I clamped the frame down so it
was seated on the key bed. Then I placed the keys onto the frame one at a time and
checked the clearance between the key and the poppet by looking around the drawer at the
pneumatic on the other side. If tapping the key moved the pneumatic, the poppet was
too high. If the pneumatic could be moved more than a very small amount without
touching the key, the poppet was too low. The wooden head of each poppet is screwed
down over the threaded wire that connects it to the pneumatic. These wooden heads
are then screwed up or down as needed. The only down side to this system is that the
wooden dowels are extremely difficult to turn if the metal has corroded even a little bit.
These were bad enough that I had to be very careful not to break any of the wooden
lifter fingers which these wires sit in on the pneumatic. Also, the job of turning
these was so hard on my fingers that, by the end of the day, the two fingers I was using
to do the work were swollen so badly they felt like they were going to pop right open!!
243) The restringing on the piano is complete. Now it is time to install the
damper system.
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244) The upper part of the bass section of this piano was
designed with wound trichords. These are notoriously hard to damp. To solve
the problem of good damping, I have added extra weights inside the damper heads as shown
in this photo. I also had to spend about half a day trying different damper felt
types and positions until I found the best one to damp these strings.
245) Testing the finished piano. These systems always have problems when you
first fire them up. The job is to work with the system until the player mechanism is
working perfectly in every way. Once all the bugs are worked out, the piano will be
allowed to continue to play for many hours and through many different rolls. The
goal is to confirm that the piano will operate faultlessly for the owner. In this
photo, you can see that pressure readings from both sides of the stack are being taken as
the piano is playing.
246) The finished and reassembled piano. Now that it has had at least 20 hours
of playing time, I will go through the entire action, damper system, pedals and poppet
rail and reregulate everything. I will also tune the piano again. Now that the
action has been played in, there is a good chance that these settings will stay put for a
reasonable period of time.
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