Heavily played newish Mason gets "strident" too quickly...

[Richard Brekne]

I'd say off hand that the hammers have not had enough deep needling. Its 
a common enough problem. A lot of aspirant voicers seem to shy from more 
then a little deep needling and try and get a soft sound by shallow 
needling up around the crown area alone. This typically results in a 
hammer that doesnt yeild a lot of that fundemental sustain to the tone 
to begin with, and hardens quickly with use as well.

I had this exact problem in my own early experiences with voicing the 
traditional way. Now I use a 6.5 - 7 mm needle depth all the way up to 
around 1 mm behind the back of the crown area and up to about 2 mm in 
front of it. The entire shoulder area below on both sides need to be 
fairly uniformly needled. The softest part of the hammer ends up being 
the lower shoulder, gradually getting harder towards the crown. The 
shoulders acting like a kind of springy cushion for the harder crown 
area to use as a kind of shock absorber. If this is made soft enough, 
the voicing will last quite a long time. Course if you make them too 
soft then you just loose all your power and the sound gets too foggy so 
one has to be reasonably carefull.

Cheers
RicB

gordon stelter wrote:

>Just got an email inquiry from a man with a 2001 Mason
>BB that he plays every day for 3 hours. Complains that
>the hammers get hard and "strident" sounding quickly.
>Has had 4 techs work on it and is not satisfied.
>     I told him they may have mangled the hammers to
>the point of needing replacement, or they might just
>need regular "sugar-coating". Comments?
>      Question: Are Mason hammers from this era
>especialy prone to "packing". Should he consider
>replacing with another brand? Any other voicing
>suggestions? If replacing is deemed necessary, what
>brand would be best?
> 
>     Thanks!
>     G
>
>  
>