Hi Jeannie Good question. Easier to demonstrate than write about to be sure. Most of my experience comes from 2 1/2 decades of trying to get at the heart of understanding hammers by pushing on that and the voicing envelope. It pushed me, into rebuilding. I hate the answer, you know,... its by experience, and, well that doesn't help anybody much,... does it? But,.... The truth is we learn by doing. By being inquisitive. That is where it began for me. During and after my time spent teaching" Everyday voicing" with Bob Davis I had been looking for a hammer that could produce a sound I liked with out hours of acupuncture . Actually it wasn't that needling was a bad thing in ityself, but it did not give me the sustain and the dark side of tone easily. And the noise always came back. Its true, many hammers have gotten better overall (some not) and as Ed S. says, "the world is changing", so cast nothing written here by me in stone. Perhaps a guide post only I have had extensive on experience with both the Ronsen hammer and the Isaac hammer. Having sold both, first, the Isaac in the early 1990s, and since have collaborated, taught and done R&D with Ray at Ronsen for about 12 years. For me these 2 hammers have been my learning ground and my weapon of choice all though I haven't used the Isaacs in 15 years. Sorry...all that to say I have literally handled hundred of set of hammers, probing them, using them, voicing and comparing the results. After while I would feel a certain density that I learned was workable, or not. The hammer that works the best in my book have a feel that I call uniform density or stiffness. By that I mean, when I test them by inserting a needle in the shoulders, crown or through the cut side, the stiffness, is fairly even. It takes a resistive force but the needle goes in all the way to the molding or thru the side and isn't blocked by overly dense felt near the top of the molding. Nice resistance going in and a needle that doesn't pop back out when with drawing it. This is a workable hammer. The other tool I use is my Flex-o-meter which actually a hand held press which allows your hand to squeeze the hammer, showing its motion and also giving feedback in a very tactile way as to its strength & compressibility. Many have heard about this device before and have seen it in class with Ray. I wish I could shout this. Here goes....In most cases....IT DOESN'T' TAKE A HARD HAMMER/ FELT TO PRODUCE TONE. I feel better now. But the best test for me is the needle test. Beyond that, hammer sampling is the best wisdom, and David Love has really been a proponent of this. It makes perfect sense considering the varying stiffness of s.board systems and differing stiffness of many brands of hammers. For example. What type of hammer would best serve in an old vintage board with the little crown and minimum down bearing? The petrified felt brand or the cotton ball brand? Ok, neither but on a stiffness scale of 1 to 10. I'll take a 6 5 or 6 ish not a 8 or 9ish. Make sense? Try sample hammers in a piano before committing to them. I've made this mistake loads of times. The entire concept is summed up this way. The inherent stiffness of a soundboard system needs to be matched by a hammer set thats stiffness gradient ellicits the best overall sound (however you determine that) with out massive amounts of voicing. And.... No stiffness gradient present in any set of hammers, will precisely match each note on any piano but voicing will be minimal when the set of hammers more closely matches the soundboard systems stiffness. If we want to hit the bulls eye, aim at the bulls eye not the target. Sorry for the long answer. I find it hard to write this stuff clearly Hope it helps. Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com Custom restoration Ronsen Piano hammers Join the Weickert felt Revolution 209-577-8397 209-985-0990 -----Original Message----- From: Jeannie Grassi <jcgrassi at earthlink.net> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Sun, Feb 20, 2011 10:37 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] Lacquered hammers Dale, Can you describe exactly (or close_) as to what you want to feel with that probe? What feedback are you looking for from that? I think this would be a most helpful bit of information for me to think about. I know how I want it to sound after I'm done needling, but many times when I'm done I wish I had never started, but do not yet have a way to evaluate that. jeannie grassi Bainbridge Island, WA P.S. I'm loving this conversation even though I'm a few days behind in my reading. On Feb 17, 2011, at 5:30 PM, Dale Erwin wrote: Double dog dittos Doug. Well said. I've said similar things but nobody listens to me. :) I here so many guys curse lacquer and nary a dismal word about a mind numbing 200 needle strokes a hammer or another step towards carpal tunnel syndrome. The intelligent judicious use of thin solutions is acceptable and workable. It is the over use and unintelligent applications od solutions into hammers which IMO should possibly be declared defective from the git go that mystifies me. I think we need some classes on the subject and stop ignoring it like its the stepchild of voicing. It is a tool and the misuse of tools often leads to failure or injury. FWIW. I probe each set of hammers with a no 6 needle to check for an adequate density whether it be Hot pressed, or luke warm pressed, before I ever commit to them. Sent many sets of each type back if they failed the test. Its too much work and its too important to be successful and foolish to risk failure with the clients money Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com Doug wood To: College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org> OK, while I'm on a roll here. I guess I really don't see that the variance in need for lacquer is really all that different from the variance in need for deep shoulder needling on the hard-pressed hammers. I've heard reports from 20 to 200 blows in each shoulder, depending on source and hammer set. ?? I realize that I'm speaking from mostly ignorance here, as most of my work involves lacquered hammers. But is it really so different that one set of hammers will be fine with 2 or 3 visits with the lacquer, and another require 7 or 8? Doug ********************************* Doug Wood Piano Technician School of Music University of Washington dew2 at uw.edu doug at dougwoodpiano.com (206) 935-5797 ********************************* = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110220/0c5cdde0/attachment-0001.htm>
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