Yes Dave I too had some softer sets initially as did others and fortunately most were workable. I think I had the only true failures. R & D has its hazards & I hope this doesn't discourage any one from trying these hammers. As Andre Oorebeck said "Best hammers he's ever heard" High praise coming from him. For my money these hammers will be the standard felt eventually. This felt is so truly unique that both Ray & I have had an interesting time learning how to manipulate this felt. The latest hammers will be denser in the bass & low tenor. SO far I find that a really good careful & artistic filing of the hammer plus finer & finer grades of sandpaper really help to polish the strike/crown area which yield an ever increasing level of attack. This is true of any hammer but especially true with the process Ronsen usues. The felt 2 mm underneath the crown suddenly is much denser & the some what softer top is where I find that a few drops of juice helps enormously and sometimes more. This may be an anomaly of our pressing or perhaps the initial runs of felt. It's not insurmountable at all once this understanding comes to light. Make sense? At this moment my words may not seem to have much meaning considering your experience but the felt has been refined twice & the beauty of this felt is that it has a lot of pop or tonal power when the voicing gets into it zone especially with the newer iterations of the felt.=2 0 For what it's worth I have studied the movements of hammer compression in my hand held gauge for 18 years. Observing this felt I observe the effect is one of a strong natural spring. More so than any felt I have ever witnessed. For this reason I would like to discourage heavy applications of juice in the body of the hammer & encouraging stiffening the top 1 or 2 mm first or so with something like an 9 to 1 lacquer solution first. See my post on the Stwy D. Try one sample at a time not wholesale applications. I want to restate clearly that Ray & I have been working very hard to bring technicians a weickert special felt hammer so that it requires only light needling or nothing when first installed. And we would like it to require zero hardeners. Dale Erwin Dale: I put a set of Wieckerts on a B over winter break and I’ve doped them twice so far and I don’t think I finished. Any suggestions? I tried them because of good reports here though at this moment I think I prefer the Wurzens. dave David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of erwinspiano at aol.com Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 11:28 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org; oorebeek at planet.nl; Erwinspiano at aol.com Subject: Re: [pianotech] Weickert special felt Hi Andre That opinion is nice to hear & carries a lot of weight with me. Can you elaborate on the voicing protocol etc? I'm up to my ears in Wieckert R& D currnetly. I'll send an update in another post. Dale Dale Erwin The client decide to try the Weickert special felt hammers instead. Dale I have tried the Weickert special hammers. The best hammers I have ever heard. friendly greetings from André Oorebeek Antoni van Leeuwenhoekweg 15 1401 VW, Bussum the Netherlands tel : +31 35 6975840 gsm : +31 652 388008 www.concertpianoservice.nl "where Music is, no harm can be" = Carnations mean admiration, Tulips mean love - what do Roses mean? Find out now! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090214/ba3af9a6/attachment.html>
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