At 1:55 AM -0600 7/28/04, Dave Nereson wrote: >Again, I said several timesthat the pliers treatment is for >extremely hard hammers, not fine concert >voicing. Sorry, my ADD kicking in again. >I have found that needling, even shallow "sugar-coating", on the crowns >of Yamaha hammers also makes the felt pull apart. As does filing. I think >they just have really high tension compared to other hammers. My limited experience with high tension hammers is that what crown needling can accomplish has a small zone before the tone collapses into the warm and fuzzy side. Also from that point, the hammers will bang back up pretty quickly. Sugar coating on these hammers undoes something which the stability of the voicing is depending on. I think it's that once the strike point fibers have been pulled apart (more likely with "Suede brush combing" than with needling, where fibers are pushed to the side), they no longer make an interlocking matt which can easily flex and return under the blow. They're simply lying there loose in a pile, inert and unable to withstand the blow. IMH&UO
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