voicing mixtures and procedures

[Richard Brekne]

Antares wrote:

>
> As I am living somewhere in Europe, and, as I have no experience at
> all with hammer softeners (since this seems to be an exclusively
> American tradition, I would like to point out that, besides the use of
> hammer softeners there is also the old fashioned softening of the
> hammers with a voicing tool i.e. da needles.......

Excellent post Antares. I would like to clarify a couple points as to
some previous posts (including my own). First tho, I would like to point
out that I first came across the water / alcohol 9 to 1 mixture as a
hammer softener from talking to a Dutch technician at the Olso
Convention last year. He had his training from Bechstein, and he
underlined that this was not a practice one used on high quality hammers
in nearly new shape. According to him this was a proceedure started in
Europe some 60 years ago for dealing with some very old (as in used and
beat up) hammers that were severely packed due to use, and that the use
of this mixture was further (naturally enough) used in response to some
very hard new hammers of newer date and of dubious quality.

As for the use of alcohol / water or the steam proceedure, I dont think
I have ever seen any complete comparison study of these visa vi the
traditional needling approach.. On the surface of it however  I'd like
to point out the following. Needling, whatever its attributes as a
voicing proceedure are, by definition also has the detrimental effect of
tearing fibers in the felt. One is tempted to think that the "resilence
of the wool fibers"  you mention is to some signifiacant degree affected
by the amount of these fibers torn apart by use of the needle. If an
alternative proceedure can be found that accomplishes the same things
(creating your "cushion", etc..) without tearing the felt, then this
would seem to be worth pursuing. This is exactly what some proponents of
using steam or water/alcohol say these methods do. (tho as with any
proceedure that threatens in any way established proceedures there are
all sorts of qualifiers and cautions to these claims).

Not being a specialized nor particullarly accomplished voicer myself I
am not able to speak beyond what my own thinking processes allow for.
That being said it seems, based on the available knowledge and
experience, that the use of  these softening methods as an alternative
(to some degree) to needling is worth pursuing. At least until at some
point someone is able to show beyond any reasonable doubt that there is
some fatal flaw in these methods.

I dont think anyone is suggesting tho, that this proceedure be used on a
brand new set of very high quality hammers for use in a concert grand of
the quality you useally deal with. Grin... at least not yet.

Really nice post you wrote.. saved and logged under voiceing information
on my hard disk

Richard Brekne
I.C.P.T.G.  N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway