Refurb'ed action on my 200, but now a couple hammers won't fall

[jzwoopwoop]

Hello all,
Just joined the forum this morning, and this is my first post here. But I've been reading the forum for a little bit now and have a huge amount of respect for this community, and its informed and helpful members. I've owned a Wurli 200 for over 10 years, and it's always been in decent shape, except for a couple broken tines and decent-at-best action. I live in the Twin Cities and was able to find an independent repair dude who fixed the broken tines, tuned it, and showed me the basics of disassembling the wurli. As such, I finally worked up the courage to try to do some refurb projects myself, and the first thing I tackled was cleaning out the piano, lubing the balance posts, and treating some action centers on the whip assemblies.

All went fine with disassembly and reassembly, but now I have two keys whose hammers won't fall (never experienced this problem before my refurb). I'm guessing this is a relatively easy fix, but any recommendations for why this might be happening would be greatly appreciated. Similarly, there are a couple other keys whose hammers now hit the tines at slightly different spots, and produce more harmonics than they used to. Any advice or help on treating these two issues is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

As an aside, if anyone is in the Twin Cities area, I highly recommend the dude who repaired my broken tines. He's a professional piano tuner with 30+ years experience, and as an electric piano enthusiast he's recently added Wurli and Rhodes repair to his services. He was super nice, very helpful, and his prices were, in my opinion, extremely reasonable. Would be happy to help get anyone in touch with him.

[Rob A]

So, do the keys return to the rest position, or does the key stay pressed down also?

Is it worse with the damper pedal pressed?

When I did the exact same maintenance on my 200, I had to loosen a couple screws, then straighten a couple hammers and retighten to address a couple alignment issues. But I still get a little sluggish key return when I have the damper pedal down, since the damper springs aren't helping the key return in that case.

And welcome to the boards.

[jzwoopwoop]

Hi Rob,
Thanks for your help, really appreciate it. The keys return just fine, they don't stick. Damper doesn't really effect the hammers that are sticking one way or another. So yeah, I'm guessing it's something more akin to what you described of re-aligning: having to loosen screws, straighten out the hampers, and then re-tighten. I'm still a bit new to taking on some of this stuff myself, so just appreciate getting feedback from others. I'll give it a shot tonight and report back. Thanks again!

[velo-hobo]

If you removed the hammers/hammer flanges from the action rail to shrink and lube their centers, double-check the screws are tight enough.  There is a notch in all the action flanges to help keep them properly aligned to their mating part, so it'd be kind of unusual for a hammer to strike in a different spot unless something was amiss here.

If the hammer flanges are tight to the rail and you can find no other issues, you can change the strike point of an individual hammer by using a soldering iron to soften the glue that holds the hammer tip into the hammer butt.  When the glue is softened you can bend the tip forwards or backwards to adjust the strike point and thus the voicing of that particular note.

Also, regarding hammers not falling back down - when reassembling action parts after having removed them from the piano for whatever reason, sometimes the fly can fail to resituate itself in the notch in the hammer butt.  The jack spring could be pushing the fly backwards, jamming it up behind the hammer.  If that were the case you'd have to lift the hammer up and gently pull the fly forwards until it could reseat itself properly.  It might be helpful to remove the key while doing so.

BTW there's tons of great info in the 200 series service manual, which you should be able to download from a number of places for free, including Vintage Vibe's website.  They also have a lot of videos on Youtube covering a wide variety of repair procedures.

[velo-hobo]

Oh and another reason a hammer might get stuck is if there is not enough lost motion in the action (very small gap between the tip of the fly and the hammer butt). If that is the case, the fly tip can get stuck in the catcher and fail to return to the at-rest position after a strike.

Visual inspection of the action components will allow you to discern whether the issue is the previously-mentioned fly dislocation (forgive my invention of terminology), insufficient lost motion causing the fly to stick in the catcher, or some other problem (loose/misaligned parts, missing felt in the hammer butt, etc.)

Lost motion is adjusted by raising or lowering the lower capstan screw (on the whip in 200 models, on the key in 140 models).  Factory spec for the 200/200A calls for a 1/32 gap, but I like to set it closer if possible (just at the point of lost motion), as I feel it adds more sensitivity to the hammer throw.  Different models and different instruments will have different potential adjustment limits as they are all unique beasts at this point, IMO (especially the older ones).

[jzwoopwoop]

Thanks for the incredibly thorough responses, velo-hobo, really helpful stuff. I actually think the problem is attributable to the issue of lost motion, which you described in your second posts. At work right now so I'm going off memory, but what you described about the fly tip getting stuck in the catcher -- that sounds dead-on to me.

So to fix that, I'd have to get ahold of a capstan screw, right?

Thanks again.

[velo-hobo]

Yes, it is the lower of the two screws which are visible from the front of the piano, hanging down from the whip.  They look like little dome-headed carriage bolts.   Lowering this screw decreases lost motion, raising it increases lost motion.  If the fly is getting stuck in the catcher then you want to increase lost motion.

You can visually inspect for the at-rest gap between the fly and the hammer butt.  Also, gently pushing down on the key will let you feel how much lost motion there is before the hammer starts to rise.

Ideally you want to use a capstan wrench that is the appropriate size.  If you only have to do a couple adjustments, you could try turning them by hand after removing a few keys to give yourself some room.  Sometimes though (especially if they haven't been adjusted for a long time) they may be very difficult to budge with your fingers.

Honestly the proper tool is a capstan wrench but if extra care is taken you might be able to get away with using something else.  I generally discourage this but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?  Just make sure not to damage anything if you're using an improvised tool.

Really, the capstan wrench is not a very expensive tool and it will allow you to adjust the let-off screw as well.  It's a worthwhile investment if you have any interest at all in doing your own regulation.