Is it just me or ... (Hamiltons)

[Susan Kline]

At 06:19 AM 7/18/2002 -0400, Terry wrote:
>I got trounced a while back for expressing some negative thoughts 
>regarding these fine pianos.

We're just offering a contrary experience, Terry. No need to feel beat up, 
since we were talking about a piano, not your character. Win or lose isn't 
relevant, IMHO.

I think that the excessive action noise you heard in Hamiltons was possibly 
the first stages of Corfam Fossilization. I haven't found the spacing to be 
wildly wrong in Hamiltons. Possibly some of your spacing trouble is due to 
loose screws, climate-related. They stay pretty tight, here, in general.

I've had a few which broke the top bass string, or a couple of the wound 
tenor strings. Otherwise, not a string-breaker.

I've found that when the tone gets rock-hard a liberal dosing of vodka 
right into the strike lines (usually they're long) helps a lot. I try not 
to play the bass strings till it has dried a little, since I don't want to 
risk rusting the core wires. After putting the vodka in, I find that some 
notes react much more than others, so I dose the stubbornly loud hammers a 
second or third time. At that point, if any hammers are still bad citizens, 
I give up and put a single needle (quite large, and quite a lot exposed) 
right down the gullet, slanting. These hammers are worn out, anyway, I tell 
myself.

After a little of this, a Hamilton becomes really quite civilized in tone 
and response, ready to be played to death for another couple of decades. I 
like being able to reach into my kit for a dropper-bottle, and bring the 
tone down in a few minutes, without even removing the action. Unlike using 
steam, I haven't found that the hammers swell out of shape much with vodka. 
They don't seem to need filing any more than they did already, though I'm 
sure they'd appreciate having the strike lines reduced in length. When 
hammers are worn flat to this extent, I don't like to reshape them too 
severely -- they get so light and short. I let the vodka do its magic on 
the strike point, so that I don't need to file to the bottom of the 
grooves. Too much felt would disappear at the same time.

I've done this in a Mormon church, and coming back a week later to tune, 
still got a good whiff of alcohol when I opened the case. "Hey," I told 
myself, "they're not even supposed to know what that smell IS." <grin>

Susan