Voicing down hammers

[John Delacour]

Just as an aside, amid all this talk of making silk purses out of the 
hair from sows' ears,  you might be interested to read the extract 
below, which I have roughly translated from the German.  This was 
written in 1897 by a maker of piano hammers in Dresden.  I can tell 
you also that he was an excellent hammer-maker, since I have a piano 
with his original (felt) hammerheads on it.

I think very most of us would be delighted to have amongst us a maker 
of 1897-quality hammers among us today, and yet here we have a fine 
and prolific hammer maker who was not satisfied and was seeking 
improvements in various ways.  I wish I had samples of hammers that 
incorporated his improvements.


         "In earlier times leather was generally used for covering
         piano hammer-heads.  A strong belt- or sole-leather was used
         to form the innermost layer, over which a an appropriate
         number of layers of so-called pianoforte-leather were laid
         to achieve the desired result.

         The demand for a bigger piano tone necessitated first a
         thickening of the strigs and of the soundboard and these
         made imperative a thicker hammer covering.  Since such
         heavier coverings became too costly owing to the labour
         involved in their production, people switched to using felt
         for the covering of the hammers.

         Although considerable progress has been made in manufacture
         of suitable felt for covering hammers that is not only thick
         enough and strong enough but has also the required tonal
         properties, nevertheless the tone produced by felt-covered
         hammers remains the 'felt tone' an so far cannot match
         in clarity the tone produced by leather-covered hammers.

         Experiments have been made to improve the tone by using a
         top covering of leather.  Various reasons, which will not be
         discussed here, have worked either singly or in combination
         to thwart the hoped-for result.  The fact is, that at the
         moment (1897) no hammer covering exists to equal the
         leather-covered hammer in bringing  out the sustain, the
         sweetness and the clarity of the tone..."

JD