Hi David Sorry bout misspelling on your name .To answer your specific ? on shrink wrapping haamers I thought a definition is in order . I consider a hammer that thas been made so hard as to be inpenitrble to needles or ones that even after much voicing soon return to there prior ear shattering ways to bear my deragatory term shrink wrapped . I am sure there are a variety of ways to do that .The one most familiar to me is the practice of introducing steam into the felt as it is being pressed and under pressure.This practice removes much or most of resilience , densifys the felt to the point of being unusable. Now however that is being done at yam. or anywhere else would be interesting to be sure and other opinions and insights and on sight observations would be enlightening .But no matter how its being done we still find a product as described above an impediment to voicing and voicing stability. Would you agree? If voicing these hammers is so labor intensive and difficult to achieve optimum results two things come to mind . Who pays for all that voicing and fine instruments such as yamaha often are not heard at there best.Now I actually did't start all this dialogue to say that all yam. hammers are this way or that this maker is the only one with the above described difficultys and it is also not to say that I don't enjoy the piano or my associations with this particular company. I'm just expressing day to day frustrations of trying to create a full piano tone with a type of hammer that is blocking my goals. There ,I think that's enough backpeddling . I do have my favorite hammers that I use and would be happy to share this info another time.But being primarily a rebuilder and remanufacturer of instruments I try to use hammers that are easy to voice and voicing stable so I'm not continually being called back for tonal complaints. I't ain't good for business. sincerely Dale Erwin
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC