Points taken. No question all those things should be carefully considered before he (or anyone else) bags an entire set of hammers. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 9:26 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bum set of NY hammers, I'm afraid On Feb 11, 2011, at 5:58 PM, David Love wrote: > I'm taking him at his word on this one. The same prep work in > fitting is required of any hammer and he has set up several others I'll just note that I try always to write with the entire list in mind, regardless of whether or not I am addressing an individual (if I only want to talk to that individual, it's pretty easy to go private). So a good deal of my emphasis is for the benefit of "everyone else" (or at least everyone who needs to be given that emphasis). And frankly, I don't think you can over-emphasize the basics, whether it is clean and solid unisons (and an efficient technique to get them) in tuning, or precise aftertouch in grand regulation, or travel/square and mating (all three, always all three, no short cuts are possible!) in action set up. And I'll say it again, because just fitting hammers to strings is not the point. Unless they are thrown precisely toward the string, the fitting process may improve things but certainly won't optimize them. It requires precise travel and square as a foundation. Otherwise your hammers are wobbling around, giving unpredictable blows to the strings (as is seen in high speed videography). This is not just speculation, it is borne out by considerable experience of refining travel and square and hearing the results. I know that I thought I was a pretty good tech 20 years ago, 10 years ago . . . Thought I had those techniques down pretty well. It is a constant process, refining and self-questioning and refining some more. So maybe some of what I write is annoying to some, but at least it is well-intentioned and based on my own experience. In this case, my own experience is that pre-hung Steinway hammers need considerable attention to travel and square, before you start thinking about lacquer and needles. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm
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