Now, to get my feet on the ground, just listened to Arthur Rubensteins rendition of Greig's Piano Concerto in A-minor. Nice to hear what a Steinway is supposed to sound like!! :>) I was a most lucky lad for my mom and dad to take me to see him when I was just a lad! What a treat! also, Van Cliburn, Asiknozy (spell), and many other greats in the 60's and 70's and 80's. Now in the 2000's It's a great honor to tune for some of the now greats......lot's to choose from, but Jon Nakamatsu is coming next month!! He's a cool guy I've tuned for before! Very nice man. Please keep up the words of wisdom. I'll be here again tomorrow, Saturday...yet again, in the shop, so I love all the great ideas of what to do next. Off for a pint, Me thinks... My hours are up on the UNL clock, so I need to vacate the premesis at all costs!! Boss doesn't like over 40 hours!! (that's another thing for a different day...How are we supposed to 'really' get these pianos in great shape when the boss refuses to pay overtime????? with 110 instruments to care for, this is impossible!! ) With the overtime needed, I can make over $100,000 year! Yaya!! Of course, I'd never be home....(sad face) Paul PS....I've "snuck in" many times to do a couple hours here/there off the books. The longer I'm here, the less that happens ;>) From: Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 02/11/2011 02:26 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid So, Why do they keep changing it? How would I know what they used on the shelf stock? This is frustrating to not know what I'm getting from the start, eh? Y'all finding any differences? Do they all come pre-lacquered these days, or did I get a special order mix-up? Paul From: Mark Dierauf <pianotech at nhpianos.com> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 02/11/2011 01:15 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid 3:1 was S&S's recommendation when their lacquer was 12% solids. Now they're using stuff more like 25% and so have adjusted the mix to more like 6:1 or 7:1, I believe. - Mark On 2:59 PM, Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel) wrote: Hi Paul, The recent hammers I’ve received have been consistently good including the 78 new Steinway grands that arrived here a couple of years ago. Some need more work than others, but they do respond. I use 2:1 for the first juicing or two and 3:1 when they are getting closer. I used to soak them like Ed Foote suggested but now I apply the lacquer directly on the crown and slowly let it soak in until it goes as far in as possible and spreads out from about 10:00 to 2:00. I think this helps keep the shoulders more flexible and puts the hardener where it needs to be. PPP to mf can be re-acquired easily with shallow needling on the crown. The last word I got from the NY factory guys is that they now pre-soak hammers in 3:1 (their mixture, I don’t know the solids content) for 30 seconds so whatever you do is on top of that. The main beef I have with NY hammers is that the weight of the hammers varies sometimes quite a bit from set to set. Heavy hammers will need much more hardening than light ones so you might want to look at your strike-weights. Maybe you have a heavy set that is just needing more juicing. One more application might make all the difference. I’ve had this experience. The hardness and resilience needs to match up to the weight… Eric Eric Wolfley, RPT Director of Piano Services College-Conservatory of Music University of Cincinnati From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Paul T Williams Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 3:57 PM To: caut at ptg.org Cc: Webb, Kent Subject: [CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid Hi all, How often have you received a bum set of hammers from Steinway NY? I've tried every trick in the book on the Steinway D I've been talking about over the past couple months, but no luck. They just don't want to respond. No charm, character or projection. The regulation is great, string mating is great, ppp is OK, but mf and up just suck! I've put far too many hours voicing one might expect to do with a new set of anything. I suppose 1 set in about 20 I've done isn't bad, but this is a concert piano. I had better luck with our other D with Wally's "special Natural Abel" hammers. The piano faculty is also disappointed in the piano now, and, of course, many recitals to go. I did switch the two pianos out. This one was in our large recital hall and the Wally Steinway was in our small recital hall and too overbearing for a poorly designed room that seats only 250. I've found the Wally's really brighten up a lot after a year or so, so I'll still need to do the 100,000 note "tune up" this summer. We'll see if that calms them down until this summer. Im now thinking of a set of Hamburgs for this problem piano. The D in the Lied Center just got new Hamburgs, and sounds fantastic. Thoughts? I'm really not liking the idea of scrapping these hammers, so if any of you have a last ditch approach, I'd love to hear it! Thanks Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110211/5b9a37fd/attachment-0001.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC