To question myself in this late hour.....how many times can one brighten up and then calm down a set of hammers? I've always wondered that, having done small increments of each, but not drastic. Can the wool handle many big ups and downs? Curious. Just finished the 3 piano concerto night for the Liszt fest. Great evening of excellent musicians. However, the orchestra could have refrained from toot tooting, ring ringing, etc while I tried to tune a few unisons during the first of the two intermissions! I suppose they'll never learn, eh? The music was supurb, however: Shumann's one and only, Chopin in Fm, and Liszt's Eb Major by 3 different pianists: Gila Goldstein, Alexandre Dossin and Arnoldo Cohen (my personal fav of the 3). Really made the newly rebuilt D sing like never before. No broken strings, unisons held their ground, and Edward Polochek, the director, gave me a hug! Not only that, the audience warmly applauded my tuning on the second intermission when the musicians idled their hands!! Im a satisfied fellow tonight. Good night all, one more day to go for the fest...working on very little sleep!! Paul From: Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 04/09/2010 10:06 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hamilton hammers I've tried the Downy/alcohol thing with mixed results. DONT over do it. I really put a "damper" on a practice room grand once. but then again, isn't that why they're called "practice rooms"??? ;>) If one uses a couple of small drops, carefully placed, it does help quite a bit. Downey leaves a slight bluish tint however. I'm sure there are softeners out there that are colorless...(?) Happy Voicing. Paul From: "Dr. Henry Nicolaides" <drsnic4 at hotmail.com> To: College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org> Date: 04/09/2010 10:00 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hamilton hammers I tried this which worked fairly well to decrease the hardness of the hammers. I read in the old Baldwin service manual to use alcohol/water dilution and then I read somewhere about adding a few drops of fabric softener. Worked in a pinch and made the piano smell "Downy fresh". Now one year later the fresh smell is gone but the hammers are still mellow. Henry Nicolaides Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 19:18:03 -0500 From: wbis290 at aol.com To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hamilton hammers Hi Paul, I think that the advise that was given to go Ronsen is great advise. The Ronsens that I have used do give a nice tone without being harsh. If they would happen to still be too loud I would be tempted to do something that I have tried with very good success on hammers that were very hard and when voiced would return to their harshness quickly. I will probably be crucified by some for this suggestion but I don't care, I tried it on Baldwin Hamiltons and it works. Try a little Profelt on or near the striking point. Use a few drops and see what happens. It will take an hour or so before you will see the results. One of the universities that I work for has Hamiltons in small practice rooms and have been a pain to try to get sounding like a piano. No matter what was done, even steaming, the hammers would eventually come back to their hard old self again. We are finally getting rid of the Hamiltons with Yamahas so there is no reason to put money into them. Out of desperation I tried the Profelt and have had great results. It's fast and easy. Some of the students have complained that the Yamaha's are too loud. I tried the Profelt on them and have had great results. Would I use the Profelt every time that I needed to tone down a piano? No way. Is it something that can be used when nothing else seems to work? Sure. But, be careful, you can over do it and then you have a whole different problem of getting the hammers hardened up again and have to start over all over.Try it on one of the Hamiltons that is not getting new hammers now and see how you like it. God bless Bill Balmer, RPT Ohio Northern University and the University of Findlay In a message dated 04/09/10 12:04:27 US Eastern Standard Time, dempsey at marshall.edu writes: All, WE have a number of Baldwin Hamilton's c.1968 that live in very small, very loud practice rooms. A small $$ windfall is going to allow me to re-hammer some of these. When new, the hammers were rock hard and defied even the most heroic voicing attempts, so I want to make sure that I install something moderately soft to start with this time. Again, the rooms are small, with block wall construction, tile floors, etc. Suggestions welcome. Paul E. Dempsey, RPT Piano Technician Sr. Marshall University Huntington, WV 304-696-5418 304-617-1149 Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. Sign up now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100409/5949e4dd/attachment.htm>
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