"Loss of Tone" Complaint

[Farrell]

I tuned a 1928 Conover 5' 8" grand yesterday. I have now tuned it three
times. They tune once a year. When making the appt., the lady asked me to
clean the piano interior because they had made dust while installing tile on
the floor AND because she noticed a loss of piano tone. Actually, she told
me about the loss of tone thing while on the car phone, so I did not want to
have a long conversation - otherwise I may have pointed out that a little
dust just ain't gonna kill a piano.

Cleaned and tuned piano. The piano appears to suffer from a "loss of tone"
(after getting dust out - so we know that was not it!!)! This piano appears
to be all original with original hammers. It is in just about as good
condition as any 73 year old all original piano will ever be. It functions
amazingly well (it's overall condition is about average for a 40 - 50 year
old piano). The tone is REAL MELLOW. It's like someone put marshmallows
(fresh) on in place of the hammers. The scale is four sections. The top two
are very quiet and super mellow, the bottom two are louder, but not loud,
and mellow, but not as muffled as the top two.

The soundboard is flat or has just a bit of crown. Downbearing seems real
good (only had my rocker gauge with me yesterday - it did not seem
excessive, although there was plenty).

Even in the top two sections, there are a couple-few notes that are a lot
louder and crisper. It's almost like all the hammers went soft, but a couple
had nail polish spilled on them.

Anyway, my overall question is why is this piano like this (I realize that
is a very nebulous question), and assuming the hammers are the primary cause
(I plucked and it seems as though the hammers are the culprit - kinda hard
to tell though because I cannot pluck as hard as a hammer can hit!) - what
happens to an old hammer to make it soft?

I am used to old hammers getting really hard - but an old one getting soft?
When you use the una-corda everything gets super-duper-incredibly mellow.
Would chemical treatment likely be of value here? I have never hardened a
hammer - always steaming or needling.

And now a more global question. What happens to quality hammers as they age?
They start out at some level of hardness, but also they will have a good
deal of tension across the strike point. I suppose this tension is
responsible for something like "a full development of a pleasing bouquet of
partials"? Even if you harden, or soften, or whatever to your liking a 50 or
70 year-old hammer, I can only assume that you will never get it back to how
it sounded when new (maybe a half-bouquet at best?). It's gotta loose
ALL/most the tension or whatever after a couple/few decades. So, would it
not be the case that in almost any situation, even if a piano owner
generally likes the tone of a piano (hammers look pretty good, but they are
50 years old), that it will likely sound better with new hammers (I realize,
not that most people would notice)? What can anyone tell me about how a
hammer ages?

Thanks big time.

Terry Farrell