I made a minor discovery the other day about square grand pianos that
might be helpful to any poor souls who have to work on one.  Don't get
me wrong: I love the all-too-rare example of a Square that can still
make music, but as we know, they are few and far between.

The real problem is adjusting the action.  Although it is the simplest
mechanism you can imagine, it seems to be impossible to regulate since
the regulation screws of the jack are a so-called rocker action, and
are fiendishly hidden under non removable parts.

An old timer once told me that the only way to do it is pull up one key
at a time, gently pull it out of the action, then guess at the amount
of regulation it needs, then put the key back and see how close you
came to getting it right.  After a few keys, you begin to get a feel
for how much adjustment is necessary, so it is not as bad as it sounds.

The real problem that as you move down from the treble to the bass, the
keys get shorter, and the geometry is such that the bottom 15 keys on
the Decker Bros. piano I was working on are absolutely impossible to
remove.

After mulling this over for longer than I care to admit, I finally came
up with the way to do it.  As I said, key #16 was the last key I could
remove.  Once key #16 was removed, the formerly impossible to remove
#15 could be lifted up and rotated into the space where #16 used to be,
and then pulled out of the action.  And once #15 was removed, key #14
could be removed.  In other words, the regulation changed from
impossible to a real pain-but at least you can do it.

If anybody out there has alternate means to regulate these pianos,
I would like to hear it.

Randolph Herr