[CAUT] "phing....pck.....pluug"

[Fred Sturm]

On Jul 24, 2006, at 9:42 PM, william ballard wrote:

> 'm not clear what you're describing here. Is the "trough" the  
> string groove? I've heard about the " 'blooming' of the felt in  
> response to needling". Cauliflowering, the texture of a hundred  
> mosquito bites. It's a function of hard pressed hammers.
	When you needle a "hard pressed" hammer (and the Kawai hammers are  
not particularly hard), the felt expands. You can see the hammer grow  
as you needle (doesn't happen so much with "rock hard pressed  
hammers" <G>. With them, you get those mosquito bites, looking like  
you attacked the hammer with a midget machine gun). As you needle up  
to, but not into the crown (approaching within 1 to 2 mm of the very  
apex, generally angling away from the apex as you approach it), this  
expansion - I call it bloom - leaves a hard "trough" right across the  
apex. You can see it and you can feel it. There is soft felt fore and  
aft, and a hard middle. (This does assume a hammer that hasn't been  
over needled previously). The sound produced with the hammer in this  
state "lacks clarity and focus." As I wrote earlier, the Yamaha team  
tells you to pound the hammer against the string to "repack the  
felt" (muting the string with your finger). The Kawai MPAs, and Don  
Mannino, tell you to file across the strike point with a super fine  
paper paddle.
	I was a bit skeptical of this when I first was introduced to it, but  
the bottom line is "What results do you get?" I'm sold. It works. I  
think it is heat and friction re-felting a bit of the loose felt as  
much as anything, but the sound is what matters. BTW, they use a very  
wide paddle, so as to be able to see precisely how level the paddle  
is while crossing the crown. I should also note that if anyone  
reading this is imagining the sound of Kawai's from, say, 10 - 20  
years ago, and thinking that this "polishing of the surface" leads to  
that rather brittle, glassy sound, well, the Kawai sound has changed  
pretty dramatically over the last ten years. I guess I'll leave it at  
that.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20060725/bb01ff70/attachment.html