[CAUT] Abel select / Ronsen-Wurzen Nancy

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Nancy.

I'm sure everyone has their own ways of going about assessing what the
customer wants and how to go about providing it for them. I'm of the
opinion that most of the diagnostics phase has to do with good people
skills developed in the appropriate directions for dealing with pianists
and voicing issues. Communication is 98% of the game.  Getting a full
and complete understanding of what the pianists wants.

Once you have that accurately enough in your head, I'm pretty sure just
about any skilled voicer can achieve a far more then satisfactory result
comming at it from a host of angles.  Be it soft hammers that need
lacquer for substance or hard hammers that need needling for elasticity,
or a mix of both.  If you have a good routing and broad range of
dynamics you are able to achieve to suit a given customer with one type
of hammer... then there is no compelling need to try other hammers per
se.  That said I think everyone would encourage you to try out different
hammers and see how you like working with them.  Some voicers find it
easier to use different types of hammers for different types of piano
sound... others like working with basically one kind of hammer and find
easily the result the customer desires.  To each their own as it were.
With out experimentation however, you will never know what lies behind
all those unopened doors.... which may or may not be just dandy either
way really.

As far as dealing with a customer who is unsatisfied... I think thats
really another discussion.  I've been fortunate enough to have had no
experience in having to deal with the unhappy customer in this context.
I suppose tho...  well one does ones best to please within reason yes ?
At the same time one must not let oneself get abused or exploited.  The
balance between the two is a very long discussion indeed me thinks.

Cheers
RicB


    I've avidly followed this thread. I use Ronsen myself and have been
    well pleased. I'll certainly try some others. My question is this:
    you are all talking about a relatively expensive part and highly
    skilled/priced labor for trial & error experimentation. How do work
    this out with the customer; what if you or the customer doesn't like
    them? You now have a used/new set of hammers.

    Nancy Salmon RPT
    Frostburg State University
    MD