These hammers do actually respond well to two voicing treatments I know of. One is repeated moderate needling... over several visits... not very economical but it does work very well. The other is to simply soak them in alcohol / water 5:1 roughly and puff them up like mush balls... reshape and treat them as if they were hammers made for lacquer. The worst thing that can happen to the sound of a Petrof is for it to become glassy bright... ice...... despite that... mushing down the hammers with a one time very aggressive needling session just kills the tone once and you may find it very hard to build back up any dynamic range. I did replace a set of hammers with some AA Wurzen felt moderately pressed on a 220.... came out really nice and held up quite well despite 15 + hours of use weekly for over a year. Its pretty bright again now. Cheers RicB > I attended a seminar at Geneva a few years ago. They recognized that > the Petrof hammers were too hard (petrofied??), and were fitting the new > models with a softer variety. This was back in 2005. I'm not sure > what's happened since then. > Paul McCloud This one's brand spankin', plenty bright to start with, and brightened up considerably in the few months he's had it. The sad part is that he bought the piano in the first place because it wasn't as clangy bright as everything else he'd looked at. I finally got enough felt pried loose to make them tolerable, but the hammers didn't respond well to needles. Ron N
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