steinway over hardened hammer

[Richard Brekne]

John M. Formsma wrote:

>Andre,
>
>Are you talking about how judicious needling will increase the volume by
>allowing the tone to fully develop?
>
>John Formsma
>
>  
>

Yes... he is talking about that.  I'll defer to him to go into detail.  
But basically we are talking about hammers that have a good deal of 
tension built into them and particularilly have much left in the lower 
shoulders area.

Typically such hammers are prevoiced to release much of this... one 
hammers away with needles at 9 oclock or below (non chemically 
re-enforced shoulders)  and then proceed to building a kind of cushion 
around 10-11 oclock... then doing the soft voicing at the crown 
area....  The problem with this is that once all that bottom end tension 
is released... you cant draw on it as a resource later.  So if one 
instead is carefull not to use more of that to begin with then one 
really needs.. then one has quite a bit to go on later if one needs to 
needle up for more power. This is roughly the basics of Andres 
technique.... he saves a kind of << power battery>> until its needed.  
Works amazingly well really.

Of course this requires a hammer that has tension availble to release. 
Lacquered hammers do not. Or if they ever did the lacquer inhibits 
that.... so once you go down that lacquer road you've forever removed 
this quality from the hammer.  I would susspect thats a big part of why 
many voicers view lacquer with such disdain. Taking that quality from 
the hammer is tantamount to wrecking the hammer in these folks minds.  
Just like stabbing deep down the throat through the crown will kill the 
hammer.  I tend to agree really.

Cheers
RicB