Although you may end up expressing your modifications or measurements in
terms of jack free travel, you should base your decisions not there but
upon the behavior of the front of the key (the part you play). Measure
it there.

I like to feel a couple of mm's of key-head free fall after the last
pluck; in fact, perhaps perversely, I rather like the feel of no
jackrail at all (that is, on instruments with something else to stop the
keys. Just a personal oddity, and nothing I would recommend or even use
in serious playing myself.

Others have different preferences. I have been told that Gustav
Leonhardt prefers no after-fall at all, saying that it just means extra
work to no apparent purpose. To ME, however, this set-up makes a
quilling job feel much stiffer and heavier than it really is. Like
banging into a brick wall.

I have just put in the back 8' rank of jacks on a new Italian, and I'm
fooling about with jackrail cloth and keydip as we speak, so the topic
is of some interest to me just now.

owen

James wrote:
>
> Anyone care to suggest how much jack free travel should exist between the
> pluck and when the jack hits the jack-rail?  I need to increase keydip in
> my ZHI Flemish, and that limit at the moment is established by the jackrail
> rather than by the keytail hitting the rail at the back of the
> keyboard.  So I guess I need to remove the jackrail cloth and remove some
> wood.  But I need to know how much is too much.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim Bunch