Vacuum Gauges
By Spencer Chase
A final response to Pete Knoblach's loud piano. You are wasting your time charting anything with a gauge from Player Piano Co. These things, at best, give a fair reading at mid-scale. At the low end they are worthless. A cheap (the price may have been high) Bourdon tube gauge has so much internal friction and gear slop that it is entirely random at the low end. Use a water column or a good gauge or two and check them first against a water column. Gravity doesn't lie.
If you don't want to get water near your piano, the best gauges for the money are the Dwyer Magnahelics which can be gotten from W. W. Grainger Co. If you can't buy from them, most hardware stores will order from them for you. You can get a good gauge for less than the cost of the Marshalltown (or whatever) from Player Piano Co.
Pat Mallarky's scheme of using a low end gauge and a high one is also what I do. Most gauges are designed for best accuracy at mid scale, and most state the accuracy as a percentage of full scale. This makes anything but a precision gauge useless at the low end, but this is just where the critical reproducing piano range lies on a 0 to 100 wci gauge.
The important thing, though, is to set up the piano properly in all respects, and it will make the right levels. You can't fake a Duo-Art up to a set of vacuum levels and have it make music. Find out what is wrong and fix it. If you can't get the piano to play properly following Craig's set up procedure, something is wrong. I spent months trying to get my first Duo-Art to play properly, adjusting and readjusting etc. What it needed was a complete rebuild.
Spencer Chase
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(Message sent Fri 30 Aug 1996, 17:00:02 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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