New Bostons

[Susan Kline]

At 07:02 PM 1/24/2003 -0600, Tim wrote:
>I have started using a 2 ounce spray bottle with half water, half rubbing 
>alcohol and 5 drops of unscented fabric softener.  You spray on as much as 
>you want and the results are instant.   Try a little at a time to get a feel.

Not too different from what I would do, except that I would never use the 
fabric softener. Possibly you feel you must in a very dry climate, to try 
to attract what little relative humidity you have to the hammer. But I hate 
putting stuff into a hammer which I can't take out, especially if it's 
(what can one say?) -- _goo_.

I keep my dropper bottle of generic "vodka" in a ziploc bag in my kit, and 
just use a few drops right in the strike grooves to take down the edge of 
the tone. I make several passes on difficult pianos, marking the keysticks 
with chalk so that only the harsher sounding hammers get a little bit more. 
I never put on enough to soak in below 2 and 10 o'clock, and most of the 
time I stay within the grooves completely, tapering down to one small drop 
in the top octave.

I find that if I get too vigorous and do much more than that, on heavily 
played (gospel) pianos a couple of years later they have stopped getting 
brighter and if anything are a little too mellow in the middle treble. I'm 
theorizing that the vodka weakens the bonds between the fibers when the 
notes are really beat on by the player. I do notice that really bright 
hammers with some vodka still wet on them will tone down if they are 
whacked really loudly, instead of getting brighter.

I think we should explore the differences in long-term results of 
steaming/vodka/<ugh>snuggles in climates with different humidity.

Susan