Hi, Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions. I really appreciate the detailed explanations, the caveats and especially the photos. Looks like that set of hammers might be useful after all... Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> wrote: > I've used the hammer softener as well, but BEWARE! It's easy to make them > pretty well worthless. I used it on a practice room and one DMA student > left me a note that they sounded like "Nerf" hammers! Way dead. However, > filing a bit and needling brought them back to "near dead" for another > year, but I think I now have to replace them. Hint...use the hammer > softening touch very carefully! Might work, though, if your really > conservative with it. why not just needle the heck out of them? Just a > time thing? These are hammers on the shelf - not in the piano. Rather than trying to fix a botched voicing job, I prefer to start from scratch... I suspect the final result will be better that way. I'll probably have to hang them on the piano that's used for orchestra rehearsals (job scheduled for this coming summer) so I need to squeeze as much "oomph" out of them as I can, and needling to death overlacquered hammers (or using softeners) probably isn't the best way to go... I may still be able to wangle the money for a set of new hammers, but this is my fallback position... Israel Stein Piano Technician Creative Arts Technical Services San Francisco State University
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC