If you own a Young Chang, Wurlitzer, Weber, PianoDisc, or Cline piano which was manufactured between 1990 and 1994, and if you are experiencing really bad playability, please click here to contact me. If you are outside my area, I will be more than glad to help you find a technician in your area who can fix your piano.
Young Chang has manufactured pianos under a variety of stencil names, among them are Young Chang, Wurlitzer, Weber, PianoDisc, and Cline. Many of the grand pianos manufactured by Young Chang between 1990 and 1994 used an unstable alloy in the action brackets. These are brackets that hold the rails that the hammers and other action components are mounted upon. The instability manifests itself by its propensity to actually grow – a LOT – growing in all directions, most notably height (bottom to top) and depth (front to rear).
With growth on the scale of a centimeter, it wreaks incredible havoc on the regulation of the piano, which relies on the brackets to hold the rails to a specification expressed in fractions of a millimeter.
Many technicians are not aware of this problem, and as a result will try to re-regulate your piano when it begins to play poorly. This practice usually helps -- a little bit -- but it only serves to mask the real problem. Eventually it becomes an exercise in futility. It’s a bit like using Febreze to cover skunk spray in your living room. (OK, that might be an exaggeration!)
The only real solution is to replace the brackets. Young Chang has gone far above and beyond in this matter. They provide replacement brackets and pay the technician a stipend for the installation. They do NOT pay for re-regulation. An instrument of this age will invariably require regulation anyhow, and regulation is never covered under any manufacturer’s warranty for more than one year.
That is to say, you will need to pay your technician to regulate your instrument after he or she installs the new brackets. That charge usually depends on a lot of factors, such as condition of the hammers and several other adjustments that need to be made to restore an enjoyable, playable touch to your piano.
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