JD This is interesting feedback from the time yet look at the early Steinway NY hammers. It was a very light hammer with seemingly fine felt. It has an almost cashmere quality to it. My guess is that the original Steinway sound was fairly dark/strong & mellow & brightened with felt compaction/playing/String marks & age to produce the tone Concert Pianist/techs required. Perhaps the evolution of this kind of powerful sound led to the evolutionary use of shellac & then lacquer as hardener. NOw we have ever harder hammers. However I think the pendulam is swinging back the other way toward a less dense/hard hammer in some circles & find that musicians here are begging for it or at least entirely relieved to sit at a piano that has dynamics,color & sustain. Best regards Dale "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 ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20071106/89459d64/attachment.html
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