Hi Fred... refer to the quotes below for context:
You get into this bit about when the outer layers are just ripped apart
and have nothing left to offer a piano hammer when attempting to release
whatever battery is left. And while on the get go I'd say this is the
time to replace hammer, we both... we all know that often enough we are
dealing with situations where you just have to make do. Your description
is perfect... dead, uninteresting... no spectrum....
If the shoulders have absolutely no support then at best (assuming you
have some <<battery>> left somewhere to draw on, you can get a kind of
on the border of mushy beautiful sound... with no bloom and no real
brilliance available. So.... what actually is the problem here ? Seems
to me the answer is that the hammer has some deep level power left...
with no shoulder firmness to support it. I find that you can improve
this exact situation quite significantly buy adding lacquer that
penetrates about 3 mm of felt from about 10:30 downwards on each side of
the hammer. In fact the next piece I will post on the Bergen
International Festival thread is exactly this kind of a situation.
Hammers are original on a near 30 old piano. Not much felt left in the
upper tenor/lower treble section and the surface area is just totally
non resistant to a needle going in. Yet... go to the core at 11:30 and
you meet quite a bit of resistance. Before the festival start this was
an instrument that sounded hard as stone... the classic Stoneway sound
:)... I used about 15 hours prepping this instrument for reasons I wont
go into here.... outside of mentioning I wanted to make a demonstration
about the separation of user interface (read action/ hammers) and the
string/bridge/soundboard assembly. So all the remaining tension in the
deep areas around the core felt were accessed... which made the piano
quite mushy as I had to go through the upper layers to get to it... then
I followed with cellulose lacquer to firm up the shoulders ... much like
a description I heard about the shoulders function from Franz Mohr (sp?)
many years ago in Seattle.
I'll let you judge for yourself when I post the link to the piece... but
the improvement was quite a bit beyond what I'd call <<significant>>. It
was almost up to the task of a recital instrument.
All this goes to show a bit more of what we are working with... and what
works together.... The deep felt cant be too compressed or hard or you
just get a flat <<K>> bang on fortissimo play... or even lower level
play sometimes... yet without sufficient shoulder support you cant get
any dynamic range and end up with an equally flat sound that can range
from pure mush to the afore mentioned depending on what you've done to
the core.
This seems to explain also why careful use of pliers to loosen up the
deep felt without cutting through upper layers has a positive affect.
There is a balance to be reached between the resiliency of the deeper
layers and the upper layers. Or so it seems to me at this point at any
rate.
Cheers
RicB
RicB writes:
Further, pressing allows one to either re-enter an already open
channel to either spread further or to move in deeper. I find this
latter to be of tremendous value when the power of the lower
shoulders (what André refers to as the battery of the hammer) is
used up. Going in to the tip of the core at about 11:30 very slowly
with one needle releases an often untouched source of extra power,
that very compact area right around the core itself. I have the
sense that this also loosens up a hammer that has been used over
many years as well.... that after many years of use not just the
surface area gets compressed but the entire depth of the hammer gets
further packed. The resulting sound is one that lacks body,
depth.... going in deep at the core one needle slowly at a time can
yield a wide open beautiful sound with increased power as well...
much like opening up the lower shoulders in new hammers does.
Fred replies:
I agree about being able to feel and control with pressing
technique. And about deeper one needle work. I think deep single needle
as you describe can be effective anywhere you penetrate more deeply than
the initial "pre-voice" (deep shoulder needling, typically about 5 mm).
The battery isn't just at the lowest shoulder, it is everywhere in the
core of the hammer, where there is dense felt that hasn't been
"massaged" to loosen it up. Loosening up means the springiness of the
individual fibers is released, and they will press out on the outer
layers. But this doesn't work when the outer layers have been massacred.
I have run into this several times: the tone is kind of dead and
uninteresting, and there is no spectrum to speak of. Feel the shoulders,
and there is some give - seems to have been pre-voiced okay. Stick in
needles, and they go in 3 - 4 mm without any resistance to speak of. A
little deeper, though, and there is a lot of resistance. But deep
needling doesn't really bring the hammers up, and nothing seems to work.
Similarly with steaming or adding a solution including some water to
similar hammers, and watching them "come apart" - as I have seen
described a few times on this list (haven't experienced it myself). The
integrity of the outer layers has been compromised so much that they
don't hold together, and don't contain the pressure of the inner fibers.
My take is that this is caused by destruction of fibers of the outer
layers by too much rapid stab voicing, not very deep. And I have
observed people doing this on many occasions - a lot of random hacking,
and the needles don't penetrate all the way more than maybe 1/4 of the time.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
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