This is a bit off-topic, but my experience might be helpful. I recently retired my 40-year old heavy extendable tuning lever (it feels odd to me calling it a hammer) in favor of a new Faulk carbon fiber model. I've always favored a short tip and used a combination head and tip sold by Apsco (top). Following my desire to have a stubby tip, I asked AMS machine shop to make one up which they did (middle). I'm in love all over again!
The new lever is very light, strong, good feedback and the short tip minimizes flagpoling. I happen to tune with both hands, so working around plate struts isn't a problem, but using Schaff's tip extender could be the answer for those few we run into (bottom). Note the end diameter of the extender is ground smaller to accomdate those pins which are too close to their neighbors to fit a standard tip.
Mike Kurta, RPT
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090101/df63c9be/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_2411.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 659951 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090101/df63c9be/attachment-0001.jpe>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC