The hammers on the instrument I am actually dealing with are very very light and very very soft. I mean they are so squisshy soft you wouldnt believe it. So in this particular instance we are not talking about any match between the board and the hammers. And in general, instruments like Zimmermans and some of its cousins in the old northern European communist bloc countries have this same quality and no amount of hammer work will change that more then very marginally. No... this is purely board related.. and the subject matter I am interested in is purely board related. I want to know more about what kinds of design elements a soundboard can have that go in this direction. The usual direction we start looking at seems to have to do with too much stiffness/thickness... etc. But perhaps the advice I'm getting from down under points to another plausible cause.... lack of stiffness in a particular direction relative to the strings in a selected area of the instrument. So... thats what I want to hear and learn more about. Thanks for the fine post otherwise tho. Cheers RicB It can be that the hammers are not a good match for the board, as it seems to have been in your case. A softer hammer will help filter out some of the unwanted upper partials that, I assume, contributed to the "mean" quality. Often, a nasally sound has to do with lack of resilience in the hammer which influences hammer string contact time and how the tone develops. Of course soundboard response can't be overlooked either. I like to think of tone as having three phases: attack, development, sustain. The interaction between the hammer and the soundboard can influence all three phases. For example, a harsh attack can be a function of a loose board or a too hard hammer but is usually some combination. A distorted development phase can be a function of a hammer which is too heavy for the board and sustain problems can be a function of a board which lacks adequate stiffness (or mass depending on the section) or a hammer which lacks proper resilience influencing hammer/string contact time, or both. Whatever the case, matching the hammer to the board with a clear tonal goal in mind is important. Obviously, voicing gives some wiggle room but should, in my view, be used mostly for the wiggle and not for the big shake. Ideally, the hammer should start out pretty close to your tonal goal and depending on the soundboard response (and string scale) that requirement will change.
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