I've been doing some playing around with vodka voicing, that is, applying 80 proof vodka to the shoulders of the hammers, about the 10-11 o'clock and 1-2 o'clock positions, usually in octaves 2 through 6, somewhere between 2-3 oz total, with a little follow up needling to do some evening after they've soaked a little. So far it has been on 2 Young Changs, a G175 and a G213, a KG2 Kawai, and an older 6 foot Baldwin. All of them had rock hard original hammers (not sure about the Baldwin) with a very percussive sound. The results have been very pleasing. The G175 has had two such treatments and has improved each time. I'm going back out again this week to see where it has ended up. I just did the G213 this morning and tried 100 proof for it (probably the first time vodka has been in that church!). It was sounding much better by the time I was done tuning it. I'm encouraged. Those original Asian hammers are too hard to stick needles in and there is no budget money for replacements, even if I could convince them that the pianos would sound nicer. What I like about this treatment is that so far it hasn't been a huge change, but a nice improvement. So the customer isn't shocked, but can appreciate the difference. It is taking away some of the percussiveness and creating a more open sound. I've not done a lot of voicing so I don't have the vocabulary mastered just yet. I got very positive feedback on the Baldwin (which is in a Presb church) from the community choral leader who always liked doing performances in the church but always hated the voicing on the piano. On that one I also did some filing and shaping. Thanks to all on this list for their encouragement & instruction. Dean Dean May cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN 47802 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090313/14e53331/attachment.html>
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