[CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid

[Paul T Williams]

Even the worst mating of strings won't help these hammers.  (BTW, They 
meet and greet all as friends), The regulation is magnificent, and have 
been told so by many artists since this install.

This is a Hammer issue, period.

Please let me know hammer proticol on this.  not speculation on other 
things....


Best,

Paul



From:
Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
To:
caut at ptg.org
Date:
02/11/2011 04:48 PM
Subject:
Re: [CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid



On Feb 11, 2011, at 2:06 PM, David Love wrote:

Agreed that he needs to have things square and mated enough to get a good 
sense of the tonal potential.  But I wasn’t under the impression that was 
a question mark in this case. 

One person's certainty that things have been done well may not correspond 
to another's. I harp on these things because I am convinced (from checking 
many, many instruments, often rebuilt and prepped by quality shops from 
both coasts and in between, or new from dealers) that most people don't 
pay enough attention to them, and don't have an adequate technique to 
attend to them in the precise way they require. So they go about blaming 
other factors for the shortcomings of the instrument. And more often than 
not, if it is a customer's instrument and I have the opportunity to 
correct them, I find that most of those shortcomings go away, not just in 
my eyes and ears, but in those of the customer. (Often there is voicing as 
well, but it is after these things have been refined). 

Travel/square/mating may or may not be factors in this case. I wouldn't 
know without pulling the action and checking myself. So as a member of a 
long distance list, I point out things that nobody else is talking about. 
Of course, it _could_ be "defective hammers" (I doubt it), could be 
something to do with the structure of the instrument (quite possible), 
could be expectations that the particular instrument won't meet. All we 
can do at a distance is give our best guess. My point is that until you 
are absolutely positive you have laid this foundation well, all other 
speculation is premature.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"I am only interested in music that is better than it can be played." 
Schnabel



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