of Q-tips and bricks...was Night And Day

[JIMRPT@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 02/07/02 8:04:07 AM, antares@EURONET.NL writes:

<< OK, I'll shut up then. >>

Don't you dare.......................if'n y'all does yo hammer gonna fall 
off......

There are soooo many hammer makers because there is such a wide variety of 
tastes in initial tone. Perception of the installer has a great deal to do 
with what is :
"too hard", too soft"... Oh to be sure there are objective measurements that 
can be done...but we don't listen to measurements we listen to tone. For any 
tech too say that a particular brand of hammer is too hard in general....is 
in itself a 'perceptual' general statement that can be safely ignored.  With 
most of the different hammer qualities being more or less mutually exclusive 
one hammer can't be all things to all techs...........
 
 Voicing philosophy must come into play with each new set of hammers 
installed and should be taken into account 'before' the hammer is purchased. 
It is no secret that I use Abel and Renner almost to the exclusion of 
anything else... I do so because to my way of thinking there is no finer 
hammer on the market than one of these two.  Does that make me right and 
everyone else wrong?...of course not.  

  If your preference is to start with Q-tips and harden them to a usable 
point ...then go right ahead and do so....
On the other hand if bricks suit you better...have at it.  Just bear in mind 
that your choice does not nullify the choice of others, nor does it make you 
right and them wrong. Jon says that he prefers to start with a firmer hammer 
and voice down as opposed to a softer hammer and juice up and I agree with 
him and that particular philosophy. As anecdotal evidence of the veracity of 
this choice let me say that I have many, many, many sets of Abels and Renners 
on 'performance' pianos and pianos owned by 'professionals' up and down the 
East coast and I have 'never' been asked to change a set of hammers...I think 
to find three sets with the same player says more about taste/technique than 
it does about the hammers.

 As for "can't we get away from this".....no we can't..not if we want to 
duplicate the tonal qualities of a particular instrument as closely as 
possible....everything changes over the years of course but generally 
speaking if we want a Hamburg to sound like a Hamburg than we need to use the 
same thingees Hamburg used.  We can, however, use something different and 
arrive at a verrry pleasing tonal quality that is 'different' from but not 
needfully 'better' than the original.....

 Manufacturers use what they use because they get the results they desire 
best from what thay use...if not, they will change what they use. Individual 
techs use what they use for similar reasons....Your choice 'juice up' or 
'voice down' butttt keep in mind 'your choice' is just that.
My view.
Jim Bryant (FL)