Hammer Types

[Erwinspiano at aol.com]

Hey David
  Good and practical Advice. Sampling  is  smart in these cases.Thanks for 
the encouragement on trying the Abels.  This Grotrian 9 ft.really responded well 
to what was definitely a very hammer  specific application & it saved me a 
lot of work & created the right  sound for this piano.
    It's original hammers were  Renners of some kind & though worn out some 
of them were  voiced well  nearing  optimal tone for the intrument in the 
killer octaves.  So... With a no. 6 needle a quick acupuncture test determined what 
 kind of hammer stiffness this board was responding to & was  asking for & 
this guided my decision to use the Abel performance  hammers by piano tech.  I 
hung on samples of Renner blues & the  Abels. It was Abels hands down in this  
case.
  
  BTW Barabara...This is not the usual Abel  provided by Brooks LTD.  It is a 
massively heavy & wide hammer as were  the original equipment. The shape was 
all sucker shaped & wrong &  it was necessary to grind off much unneeded felt 
to get a nicely serpentine  shape, which dropped a lot of overall weight. With 
proper shaping,installation  & strike points the piano sounded all most 
optimal from note 1 to note 53  right after being installed & with only a very  
very thin bit of juice  in the bass to give it more presence,focus & growl.  
Across the bass  break I applied about three or four drops of the same thin 
solution on the  strike point of the first octave or so to pick up a little shine on 
the  sound.(break in fluid)
    The only needling required so  far was from notes 54 thru approx 70.  
These hammers are stiff but they  worked well with this board and scale.  I will 
follow it up in it's home  environment & dial it in a bit more but I don't 
anticapte much more is  needed.
  Dale Erwin
   

it.  
>
>I think you can draw the conclusion that generally speaking  the lower the
>tension and lighter (or less stiff) the board the softer  the hammer that is
>required.  One problem is that not all scales  match the boards they are on.
>You see low tension scales on a  relatively stiff boards, high tension scales
>on loose boards and all  kinds of combinations both by design and because of
>changes in the s/b  assembly over time.  In those cases it's not clear to  me
>what the best hammer will be as soundboard response will vary and  in
>different ways.  In those cases, sampling will have a better  chance of
>steering you in the right direction.  
>
>David  Love
>davidlovepianos at comcast.net
>www.davidlovepianos.com




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