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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=davidlovepianos@earthlink.net href="mailto:davidlovepianos@earthlink.net">David Love</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To: </B><A title=gjtuner@attbi.com href="mailto:gjtuner@attbi.com">Tom Merrill</A></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> 3/21/2003 3:17:51 PM </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: Yamaha CFIII Voicing</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face="MS Sans Serif" size=2>You should be able to achieve greater stability than a week or two regardless of the acoustics of the hall. Explaining the mechanics of voicing is difficult in such a situation as this, but you need to create resilience in the hammer in the lower and upper shoulders by needling in a radial pattern between 3:00 and 1:00, or 9:00 and 11:00. Go to 8mm down in the low shoulder and progressively shallower as you approach the crown. Test with a firm blow for power without the tone breaking up. If you don't achieve that in the manner suggested insert a single needle off the crown by a few mm straight down parallel to the moulding. You can go rather deep with this, 8 mm or so. Set the felt by lightly pounding the crown with the back of the voicing tool or by using the key to play the hammer against a firm block of wood. Needle the crown lightly (1-2 mm) and set the felt in the same manner as described to adjust the attack. If you don't set the felt after needling, the brightness will come back fairly quickly. You can take those hammers down to mush if you want too. The CF hammer is a pretty good one. Though it is hard out of the box, it will respond to judicious needling. Use a single needle so that you can more easily probe for hard felt. Work at getting a sample note in each section the way you want it and pay attention to what you needed to do to achieve it. Then you can go through the whole set to rough things in following the guidelines you set up and refine afterwards. That will make it go a bit faster. Don't be too bashful with needles. Hammers are more durable than you think. It's a lot easier than hanging carpet.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>David Love</DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:davidlovepianos@earthlink.net">davidlovepianos@earthlink.net</A></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=gjtuner@attbi.com href="mailto:gjtuner@attbi.com">Tom Merrill</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To: </B><A title=caut@ptg.org href="mailto:caut@ptg.org">caut@ptg.org</A></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> 3/21/2003 8:32:21 AM </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Yamaha CFIII Voicing</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>List:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am the contract tech at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, CO. We have a new 280 seat recital hall that has a very bright lively acoustic and is easily overdriven by vocals and instrumentals. I'm having a "dickens" of a time keeping the Yamaha CFIII (circa 1987) with Yamaha hammers voiced down fairly mellow yet articulate to please the pianists. They want lots of color with projection, but not too loud. The piano gets used for solos and accompanying small ensembles and vocals.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I took every voicing class and voicing tutoring in Chicago last summer and the Little Red School House last fall, but lack the 30 years experience demanded by the situation!!</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I can get the level of brightness where we like it for a short period of time by </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>high shoulder needling and a little sugarcoating on the crown. But a week or two later, the felt packs down and it gets too bright again. I've read in the archives that this piano has a fairly heavy SB structure to compensate for the softer woods in the rim and needs a fairly robust (w)hammer to get things moving. It seems to me that we may have the wrong instrument and/or hammers for the application and <FONT face=Arial size=2>that if we want a delicate, articulate colorful piano, we oughta buy a Steinway that sounds that way to begin with. Too bad the State of Colorado doesn't win its own lottery....</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Is anyone else successful in what I am trying to do and could share some tips? I've thought about putting on a set of Isaac Cadenzas. Is this a good idea? The other piano in the room for duets is a Yamaha C7 (circa 2000). </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks for your ideas.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Tom Merrill</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Grand Junction, CO (where minimum wage is a high paying job)</FONT></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>