Yes, I offer custom prep services, Tech support. I also offer a service which conforms the weight of the hammer set to a hammer weight line on the Stanwood chart. It requires very careful weighing. I'll send you the price sheet on the hammers, the prep price & description, & the Ronsen philosophy on hammer making. Any one else who is a piano tech may request that as well and please post me off line. Thanks Paul 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: Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Mon, Mar 7, 2011 6:52 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hammers are felt springs--was Steinway.... Hi Dale, Thank you for your great offer: Doyou provide boring, tapering, coving services, too? My power toolsare a bit primative, and budget is so that it wouldn't make sense to buya whole bunch of new stuff at this time.....perhaps over a few years, thiscould be done. On the hardness factor question: Thepractice rooms are about 10x10 with paper thin walls....like most universities. I would like to see about a 5 on the 1-10 scale. I'll go upstairs and see which shouldbe my first "patient", and then get back to you. I'm lookingforward to trying the Ronsen VFG. Best, Paul From: Dale Erwin <erwinspiano at aol.com> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 03/06/2011 04:06 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hammers are felt springs--wasSteinway.... Hi Paul Thanks for the straight forward reply. Hey I know Wally too andhe is the friend of so many. I just find it good natured amusing to seethat kind of warm affection supplant the other real product name. Really,he's done so much and dersves that. As a point of clarity there is alsothe Abel product sold by Piano-tek but I think we know the difference usually.A few brief comments interspersed below. If we could limit the limitations of the comments to small practice roomsand studios becasue that is what I expereinced again last week. Anewer Mason A with the usual hammers that I had to annihilate to get theminto a better place. I was still not pleased. Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com Paul williams Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hammers are felt springs--was Steinway.... Hi Dale I think it might be a good idea for all of us to contact hammer producersto develop some sort of a soft (not too much so) hammer designed for justpractice rooms and other small teacher studios, etc. I'm wonderingif there would be a market for this. There hasbeen such a hammer and a market for the past 15 years. The Ronsen VFG andmore recently Wurzen AA felt. It is the VFG hammer that originally got my attention in approx 1993 or4. I heard an upright at a fellow techs shop. Ater listening carefullymy inquiry was, that hammer? He told me and the next question was,what did you do to them. He said..Nothing. I just got themin. In disbelief I said really? Yup Clear, excellent sustain and a fineblend of partials. On most uprights where these have been installed, sothe experience was repeatable with consistency. Have installed severaldozens of these for private clients mainly and also institutions. After installing my first set it became my default hammer of choice.Nice clear sound, no juice and no needling. Minor needling later and thehold fantastic. For uprights and practice room/small studio roomsbeing able to install this type of hammer was a low cost value added productfor the University & for me. The hold up famously well. Yeah I know,to good to be true. On as scale of 1 to 10 if no.1 is a cotton ball and no. 10 is a rock whereon the stiffness gradient would you like your practice room/small roomhammer to be for this application? I spend a lot of time voicingdown practice grands that are played 16 hours a day. No matter whatI put on them, they're harsh and painful in just a few months, but builtwell enough to handle quite a few years of abuse. Thiswould not be your experience if you decide to install a set of these soI encourage you to try the VFG Ronsen hammer and stop the bleeding outof your ears On the other hand, I don'twant to start out with a "mushy" sound that will only get toa nice level in 6 months. There are no hammers in the Ronsen family I would describe as mushy. DavidLove described them well in a recent post. These students who play thesepianos have futures that are sitting there in our hands to make them workand sound properly, so I think there must be a "happy family"somewhere. We have to keep in mind why we're all here....for the students,mostly. The stage is a totally different issue. I agree. Hey We all started somewhere Anything to lesson this massive care of practice pianos is all welcometo me. I'll make you adeal. Paul,heres my offer....Pick a practice room piano. I'll provide you with a setof VFG felt up. hammers and if you do not like them don't pay for them.I am that confident. I have installed them in Yamaha P202s,P22s of several versions. Kawaiup. Baldwin Hamiltons etc. Yamaha and Kawai grands of many sizes. More Technician feed back as of last night at the West-pac convention: I spoke with Steve Brady & Nick Gravange who both took me asideprivately to tell me enthusiastically how pleased they were and what agreat tonal platform the new Weickert hammers were. Steve said he couldn'tbelieve how even and beautiful the tone was and how little he had to doin a Falcone . Nick said he used the set I sent him in a BB Mason for a performance venueand he inquired as to my voicing protocol. He did use some 8 to 1 solutionto get them up a bit in the bass and a weaker solution higher up to getit where the room and others thought it should be. A further comment wasif it would had been his piano in his own home he would have done nothingat all. Or, I'll just have to keep the needlesin good supply. BTW, I do steam them as a "quick" fix...witha capachino steamer which the students find fascinating to watch! Wouldn'tit be great to stop or seriously limit all the voicing gymnastics Paul?I feel your pain learned this from Roger Gable about15 years ago. Nice quick fix. If the hammers are rocks, however,it doesn't really work well and I don't run the steamer over them morethan twice. What say you fellow CAUT's?? I'm I out in left field....again :>(??? just trying to learn this crazy caut thing!! I would enjoyhearing feedback as well Thanks Paul Best, Paul From: Dale Erwin <erwinspiano at aol.com> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 03/06/2011 01:19 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hammers are felt springs--wasSteinway.... I notice the Abel Neutral hammers often referred to as "Wallys naturals". Now that he's not running the company anymore, why does this persist?Melanie, his very capable daughter is running it, so shouldn't thethe hammers be called Melanies Naturals.....naturally? :) AS I read posts like this routinely I am kind of befuddled. Somany hammer makers issue us hammers with a hard knot of felt, whichis ever present over the top of the molding. This feature characterizesfirmer pressing of hammers all over the planet and they tend to be highin maintenance thereby consuming precious school budgets which are.....increasinglyscarce. I realize there are many specific situations and reasons why weuse a particular type of hammer, including me and I have sometimes chosenpoorly. It is a fact that, the technical definition of a piano hammer is anon-linear felt spring (See five lecture on the acoustics of the piano.)Yet primarily many hammers more resemble the consistency of buffing wheels.Or cotton balls filled with lacquer. And we are expected to make them workand hold up? Really? In my opinion there only a few hammers made currently in the world thatfit the true model of this description. 2 in this country, 2 in Canadaand sometimes by happy accident....China. There may be others elsewherebut I am unaware of them. And there may be some well known brand of pianoswhere the pendulum is swinging back the other way but am unclear whichones at this moment. For 25 years I have observed with keen interest the hammer wear in institutionalsettings. Routinely these ahmmers are infected with deafeningearsplitting sounds in practice rooms, and breaking strings with in veryshort periods of time etc. In light of this I ask, should we really embracethe predominate styles of hammer for high use institutional settings, especiallypractice rooms? There is, without a doubt, in my mind ,that hammers acting as a felt springhave a much greater ability to maintain a musical tone & provide preciousvoicing stability with out massive amounts of needling or much anythingelse. The resistance to this idea /reality is especially perplexing and havenot heard many support it. Is it possible to over look the pianos in ourcare that are not being problems in high use situations? Do we ask, whyare these hammers holding up and still sounding musical, and others not?hmmm. Considering the problematic nature of hot/ hard pressed hammersin high use situations, does it not make sense to consider a differenthammer choice and experience this for oneself? Professionally speaking , I am tonally and musically driven and valueboth my hearing and the music as you all do. I value the same forthe students and teachers I serve and it is why I take the risk to statethis premise clearly and passionately. The fact that I possess a bias is not for nothing and not because I aminvolved deeply with the Ronsen hammer brand. It is primarily for the reasons outlined in this post....and..... I Love music Regards Dale Erwin-Heritic at large www.Erwinspiano.com -----Original Message----- From: Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Thu, Mar 3, 2011 1:52 pm Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammer weights Hi Dave, You're exactly right! No matter what hammers are on those pianos,they get bright....and very quickly! 2 of 5 piano faculty have 2B's each; one has 2 M's, one an L, and the other has her own personal Yamc-7. It would be a nearly full time job to keep them in great tune,regulation, and voiced properly. The yam is the yam and since it'shers, can do very little. The M's are nice and not played hard, the L islikewise not pounded on, but played regularly and has Abel Naturals on. It's the 4 B's that need constant attention! One prof is anextremely hard player with likewise hard playing students, so I'm fixingbroken strings about every 6 weeks. Mostly this happens in the capo, butthe Sty with the Sty hammers has busted 4 bass strings in 2 years. Hispianos have a set of regular Sty hammers and the other has a set of WallysNaturals. Both break strings about the same. The other prof has NY hammerson both, but not as hard a player. I rarely fix broken strings there. I try to watch the regulation closely as I can, but I fear if I back offthe let off and drop, they'll complain that pp or ppp is impossible tocontrol. They are bright! I'll voice them down, but it only lasts a couplemonths. I can see how that would tire the poor prof, but what canwe do? Good input! On to fight another day.. Paul From: "David M. Porritt"<dmporritt at gmail.com> To: <caut at ptg.org> Date: 03/03/2011 02:06 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammerweights When I was working at SMU the piano teachers with a full load of students didn't want a loud and boisterous piano in their studio (all had 2 "B"s except one teacher who had to "D"s). As one piano teacherwith 55 years of experience there stated: "...you can't listen to 4 or 5 hours of abright piano. The cochlea will fatigue and you will miss subtle things." I think he is absolutely correct. dave -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org[mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org]On Behalf Of David Love Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:49 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Steinway sound-Hammer weights I agree about the concert hall in most situations although I do have apiano that I work on in a small concert hall in which I worked closely with a committee of pianists to select hammer and voice for the piano as they wanted it when I was rebuilding the action for them (Steinway B). Thegroup of 5 or 6 professional pianists and teachers ended up choosing a Wurzenfelt hammer (Ronsen), a comparatively soft pressing when compared with the more typical lacquered up hammer or a Renner performance type hammer, and with the exception of the top two octaves received no hardeners, and even thena very light application. The piano sits next to a 30 year old Bosendorfer 228 which produces somewhat more power and the complaints I get (not too many :-)) are never about the Steinway being too soft but do happen withthe Bosendorfer being too loud and bright and I've voiced it down some to please the even below where I would prefer to hear it. The hall is ratherlive though. Just one example. Personally, I find that Steinwaya bit dark (and I probably lean toward warmer and slightly darker as my own personal taste) so that might tell you something at least about this one situation andthis group of pianists, FWIW. I find that with the professional pianists that I work with (and thereare quite a few) brighter is rarely the choice for their practice pianos. Most want a pretty round and warm sound, clear and not muffled, but not whatI would consider bright. Softer hammers have often been the choicehere (though not on a D necessarily, but most I know don't practice on D's). They seem to have no trouble extrapolating to the concert hall but forday in and day out practicing they want something more pleasing even erringon darker over brighter. Not always true, of course. Many of theprofessors whose pianos I keep at Stanford prefer the pianos brighter, but not all. Perhaps that's because they are going back and forth between their studios and the stage pianos more often. Outside of that setting, however,with most of the professional pianists that I work with I would say that I'm generally asked to bring things down far below the level of where you would expect a concert stage piano to be. I do find that serious pianostudents (on the other hand), especially those on the ascent, often prefer brighter. I don't want to delve into my own theory about what that psychology mightbe but I do see a trend coming out of one, in particular, well known EastCoast music school that seems to value power and brashness over nuance and depth. Standards get set in all kinds of ways. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com The softer hammer may make some customers very, very happy, but I don't think it works in the concert hall, or in the professional pianist's studio (or as the serious student's practice instrument). Perhaps there are exceptions, and if so I'd like to hear about them. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Brecht -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20110307/109884e9/attachment-0001.htm>
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