Seek Carved Cabriole Legs and/or Lyre-1878 Steinway "C"

[TSORICH@aol.com]

Thanks for the very prompt reply.   The piano you have sounds like it is a
beauty.

I'd also like to thank you very much for your willingness to help in terms of
copying the legs/lyre.   Let me hold that in reserve, if you will, for a
brief time here until I see if any other alternative develops (I know from
having checked around that duplication is a pretty expensive route -- about
$4,000 +/-  -- unless they are shipped off some place where labor is
exceptionally cheap and then you don't know what you'll end up with).

I wonder if I might ask re your thughts in just one other area  here.  While
my piano's soundboard, crown, etc., seem fine,  I'm having some difficulty
getting a nice 'ring'/'life' in the upper treble.  The
agraffes-instead-of-capo are one limitation but, in shaving down these top
hammers (which necessarily have to be so narrow to 'squeeze in' beteen the
soundboard and agraffes), I'm not very pleased with the results.  Some folks
have said to thin down the shanks to make them less woody.  Another suggested
making the hammer angle somewhat acute so that the hammer strikes very close
to the agraffes.  Still another suggested moving the hammers further away fom
the agraffes to try to catch a different harmonic point.  (I may make an
adjustment screw and put it in the right cheek block to facilitate the slight
amount of adjustment that may be possible).  Then again, I may be entirely
off the mark in what I'm focusing on.

Did you use Steinway hammers, or others, and what kind of success did you
have?  A tuner acquaintance suggested that Imadegawa/Imagadewa (I'm never
sure I spell this right) hammers were very good and this may/may not be my
problem.

But, something intuitively tells me I would have been much better off,
regardless of manufacturer, if I had been able to obtain treble hammers of
the correct size in the first place without having to shave them down
significantly.  Is it possible and economically feasible to obtain such
hammers from a supply source inasmuch as modern piano hammers do not have to
be anywhere near as narrow?  Any other thoughts?

Thanks again.   I'm out in the San Francisco Bay Area in Foster City (20 to
25 miles south of SF).

Ted Sorich