Many thanks to Craig Brougher and Bill Chapman.  I don't have a vacuum
gauge, but will ask my technician to measure the level the next time
he's over.

The hammers are in great shape on my piano, having been replaced a few
years ago, and I recently had David Stanwood readjust my piano action
using his remarkable computer-assisted technique, resulting in a major
improvement in note-to-note consistency.  This really helped the Duo
Art mechanism immensely.  We  were able to bring down the overall
dynamic level of the Duo-Art to the point where it could play at a
significantly lower overall level than before.  I recommend David to
everyone.  He can be reached at

    http://www.tiac.net/users/stanwood/first.htm

My guess is that my Duo-Art action is performing about as well as it
can.  My issue is really more with the rolls themselves.  I think some
rolls have expression levels that simply won't play correctly on a
well-adjusted Duo-Art.  This is why I thought of the controlled leak
approach.  Another problem with many Duo-Art rolls is "compression."
Many of them have an extremely restricted dynamic range.  For example,
the Hoffman Chopin rolls have, for the most part, excellent dynamics.
But the Busoni Bach transcriptions (the Chaconne, et al) tend to start
loud and stay loud.  There probably is little that can be done for this
particular problem, other than to recut the rolls and change the
dynamics!

Jody, I'm very interested in contacting Phil Dayson regarding the
controlled leak on his Steck.  How can I do this?

 [ His email address and letter follow.  ;)  -- Robbie ]

Many thanks!

Chris Morgan