On Sep 20, 2007, at 5:58 PM, Douglas Wood wrote: > I keep hearing contradictory things about the nearly-mythical '20's > Steinway piano hammers, particularly regarding the use of lacquer. > Many independent technicians are convinced that they do not contain > lacquer, or at least very little. This does not seem to agree with > my experience. And I have asked at least 6 different, very > knowledgeable, senior technicians employed by Steinway about it, > and they all have agreed that to their knowledge, every Model D > Steinway ever issued from the factory (NY) has had lacquer (or its > precursor) in all 88 hammers. This includes Joe Bisceglie, who > probably had the earliest involvement with the company. > > So, can any of you provide hard evidence of a factory hammer in a D > without? I'd really like to know. > > This relates to my earlier post about the hammers being, actually, > a composite. And the suggestion that Steinway developed its hammer, > and its tone, including lacquer (or its precursor) as an essential > element. I'd guess that most of you don't hold particularly to the > purist notion that a no-lacquer hammer is by its very nature > superior to a lacquered one--that we somehow should apologize for > needing to use such awful stuff, or whatever. But this myth that in > the golden days of piano manufacture the hammers were so great that > lacquer wasn't necessary does the industry a large disservice. > > Doug Wood Hmm, hammers from a D from the 20s. Unfortunately hammers on Ds almost always get replaced fairly often, so I doubt many of us have ever run across such things. (The Paderewski is probably pretty unique in that regard, though there are probably other examples squirreled away somewhere). From the other models, though, I agree with many other techs that those I have replaced never had any evidence I could see of lacquer or other hardener (not counting low shoulders). I have felt them thoroughly, cut them apart, probed them, to see what I could find. Nothing. I think some of the factory lore may be over-stated. Yes, I suspect in the basement they used shellac in voicing early on, maybe even in the late 1800s. But they probably did so the way Bechstein does today: as needed, a little on the crown (Werner Albrecht said in his voicing class in KC a light solution of sanding sealer, just a touch as needed if nothing else works). IOW, this was a way of adapting a piano, not a manufacturing technique. The soaking of hammers in lacquer, best I can figure out from what I have heard in conversations with a fair number of people over the years, is a Ron Coners invention, starting maybe in the mid 80s. I certainly remember very vividly that all the old Steinway instructors (including George Defebaugh and Fred Drasche) said one was to apply it to the shoulders and never let it reach the crown, except maybe the top few notes. I tried to pump Franz Mohr recently, when he was here giving a technical for our chapter (on a tour promoting Steinway and his book). He's a hard person to pump <G>, always going off on a tangent. But by various devious means, I found that he wasn't instructed at all in the use of lacquer when he was hired and put in charge of the basement (partly this was the person he replaced making it hard for him, keeping the "secrets" from him). And that he considered that the need for lacquer was because the hammers were bad, that they just weren't able to make good hammers at that time. He was trained at the Ibach factory after WWII, and came to NYC, I think, in the 60s. So he was not "born and brought up" in the Steinway factory like some, but in a way that makes him a more accurate witness. At any rate, the history is murky at best. Current practice is well documented and well presented to the public, in contrast to earlier tendencies toward secrecy. And this is a very good thing. But I think the whole thing has evolved slowly, like the progress to heavier scaling and heavier hammers, along with lower leverage ratio. And a lot of it (current use of lacquer) has to do with efficiency and ability to change the character of the piano to meet demands of the artist. It is a lot faster to lacquer and needle down a set of Steinway or similar hammers than to take a set of hard pressed hammers through the whole process of needling. Easier on the forearms, too <G>. And much easier to reverse and bring back up if you are too "mushy" or however you want to put it. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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