[CAUT] Shellac Voicing

[Ed Sutton]

As it happened, I saw this piano today.
I really don't recommend chemical hardening of Abel Natural hammers.
The Naturals in their original state had a much wider range of timbre, and 
could be played very loud without clanging or breaking up the sound.
Ed Sutton


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Sutton" <ed440 at mindspring.com>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Shellac Voicing


> FWIW, only once have I added shellac to a set of Abel Natural hammers, and 
> it was on the insistence of the customer.
>
> The piano was a 1920's S & S M, original soundboard, showing some weakness 
> in the first capo section. My preference was to leave the hammers alone, 
> but the owner wanted more bang in octaves 5 and 6, so finally I agreed to 
> harden that area. I put in thin shellac, and then used pure alcohol to 
> flush it away from the surface.
>
> Again, I would have prefered leaving it alone, but after 6 months and many 
> voicing adjustments the customer was still very unhappy, so I agreed to 
> harden the treble hammers.
>
> Ed S.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dan Rembold" <d_rembold at yahoo.com>
> To: <caut at ptg.org>
> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 9:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [CAUT] Shellac Voicing
>
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> Abel Naturals are an excellent choice for a replacement hammer, but no my 
> part I have not yet had to add power to a new set; quite the contrary.
>
> I'm just wondering, are there just a few notes that sound like they need 
> to be brought up, or the entire piano?  What brand of piano is it, and how 
> old? On the last Hamburg Steinway O that I used the Abels on, I found that 
> once I needled down the sections that had extra noise, the entire piano 
> had more power.  My guess is that more power was going into tone 
> production, less into unwanted noise.  No hardening was needed in that 
> case.
>
> Also, on your premise that lacquer continues to harden over the life of 
> the hammer, I would tend to disagree.  The apparent continuing hardness 
> must be coming from something else, since lacquer doesn't harden over 
> time.  I've been spraying nitrocellulose off and on for 30 years, and I 
> can still make an impress into lacquer finishes I did years ago, with just 
> a thumbnail.  I may be off by transferring that idea to hammers, but 
> that's my observation.
>
> No matter what you choose to use--shellac, lacquer or acetone-based--where 
> you place the solution into the hammer will have the most effect on tone. 
> If you do use shellac, the off-the-shelf prepackaged kind is never 
> consistent--you can get flakes from woodworker.com pretty reasonable.  The 
> dedicated shellac thinner is probably best too, since paint-store 
> varieties of denatured alcohol are all various blends of kerosene, naptha, 
> gasoline, and who knows what else.
>
> Let us know how it works out.
> Dan Rembold
> Auburn University
>
>