Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com 209-577-8397 -----Original Message----- From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Tue, Jul 20, 2010 8:57 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] Abel naturals - report Dale Erwin wrote: > Actually I have seen much inconsistency in hammers, set to set, as is > witnessed by this thread and I don't believe it's all poor choice of > hammers for soundboard style*. No, nothing is *ALL* anything, but hammer choice ought to start with what they're going on, and what's expected of the result, shouldn't it? > * So, I don't disagree that " just needs voicing" can be an excuse for > the choice or the hammer... "Just needs the right voicing" is exactly what I hear most out there. >so how does the _objective evaluation_ > happen quantifiably in you mind. Likely very much like it does in yours. You probably wouldn't put Bacons on a stock D in a large hall any more than you'd put Imadegawas on a chamber instrument. You'd decide, based on your experience, which hammer was best suited (closest) to what the piano and the venue need. > by the way, my real bias is that over time we techs have been marketed > to believe that a good hammer _must_ be needled extensively to produce > tone and be deemed a "Good Hammer". rubbish. Before that, we were taught at the alter that a sweat sock on a stick could be turned into the ideal (perfect?) hammer by a months long process of applying a magic but strangely unquantified and largely unobtainable lacquer with the proper incantations and gesticulation. While some people CAN turn a sweat sock on a stick into a very convincing simulation of a working hammer, I don't think I'd consider it to be the ideal approach. There's rubbish, and there's great steaming piles of other stuff. It's a matter of degree. A little lacquer, non magic, can help as can a little needling. This requires a hammer that was somewhere in the functional range of what the piano and venue needed before voicing. The less voicing required, the better you guessed. This, I know, is what you're working at, and I approve wholeheartedly. Have we disagreed here on anything at all yet? Ron N Incidentally, my spell checker just suggested "Megawatts" as a correction for "Imadegawas". <G> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100720/5ae82e7b/attachment.htm>
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