At 4:28 PM -0700 7/26/04, David Love wrote: >Unfortunately, I think that pliers are often the only choice with hammers >like that. Yamaha, btw, does not recommend the use of pliers, at least not >officially. I don't disagree with the procedure itself, it's hammers that >require such treatment that I disagree with. The thing which has always bugged me about pliers is the way they distort the shoulders. You set the bearing surfaces of the pliers, at some chosen depth in from the shoulder's edge and you squeeze. This is essentially a pinching operation. The thickness of the shoulder compresses under the jaws, and in response, the portion of shoulder directly outside of that pinched area bulges outward (to the point where the surface of the shoulders themselves actually "cup"). This outward bulge also results in felt being pulled away from the crown, putting that under additional tension. (Hopefully both shoulders get the treatment, so these side-effects are equally balanced on both sides.) All this just to loosen up the shoulders. There's nothing wrong with Aaahnold-like shoulder muscles, in applying the alc/water or fabric softener to the shoulder (leaving the crowns untreated). Except that it's not instant magic. The pliers I will use are the duckbill type. One jaw below the shoulders, the other starting at 2 o'clock and being dragged over the crown. Deep-pressure massage for cramped muscles. The same effect can be gotten with a tuning fork or a CF tool. On some hammers this lasts along time, on others it bangs back up, but not until the day after the concert. But it's immediate. I also used to do "sugar-coating" with a solder brush, essentially a wire brush in the style of an artist paint-brush. But I decided that if all this was doing was raking the crown fibers out of their interlocked matt, it was far more destructive than standard crown needling.
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