Hard Hammers

[David Nereson]

<<I had quite a bit of experience trying out steaming methods a few years 
back and arrived finally at the conclusion that steaming was not an 
option. >>

    Yet just last week at a chapter technical, we had Roger Jolly, chief of design (or similar title) for Samick (I know, I know, but he also worked for Kawai in an upper level capacity) claim that steaming is a viable option and that he was one of the original advocates of the procedure.   
    A few years ago I asked this list if people used steaming primarily for softening or shrinking, and thus hardening hammers (since wool shrinks after being wet), and never got a satisfactory answer.  Some techs claim they prefer to steam worn hammers rather than file them.  Well, that's OK if the grooves are quite shallow.  It does fluff them up a bit, and loosens the crown, but doesn't restore a firm, rounded surface.  Nobody seemed to know if the felt actually loosened up or if it shrank and hardened again after all the moisture evaporated.  

<<One thing I noticed is that hammers seemed clearly to wear out 
faster... deeper grooves appeared quite quickly in relation to other 
approaches.  Nor did I get the feeling that the voicing was stable. >>

    Seems to me that no voicing procedure is very stable, unless the method is quite drastic.
It lasts maybe as long as the tuning.  
 
Often I could get a very very pleasing sound immediately, only to find 
the work deteriorate some few weeks later. If you have hammers that are 
rocks and simply can not be needled acceptably... I'd advise changing 
rather then [than] steaming or soaking.


Yes, but steaming or soaking can be done in less than an hour, whereas installing
a complete set of hammers is quite another matter.  Usually the customer is not willing
to pay for new hammers.  Unless you work for that 1% of piano owners who are rich and
have large grands, and even then they won't spring for new hammers unless they're semi-
professional or have a child who's a piano major.   Most people have inexpensive pianos 
you're obliged to work with the hammers already on the piano.  
   

Voicing by needles that has a long lasting affect [effect]is in my experience 
contingent upon how well you needle up the shoulders... how much of a 
cushion you create as it were.  You want to bring up as much an elastic 
effect to the sound as you can without affecting the attack sound much 
first... some folks refer to this as building up the power of the 
hammer.  Once you have a nice ... shall we say... <<boingy>> elasticity 
to the sound, then addressing the attack sound can be done to take care 
of a pianists comments that go along the lines of brightness, glassy... 
etc.  You will find that with a good cushion, attack voicing will be 
very stable.

 Cheers
RicB

    Yet Mr. Jolly says he uses just one #1 needle (on new Renner blues) which he drives all the way in until it touches the molding.  I countered that many hammers are too dense to allow a needle to go all the way in to the molding.  He said, "Oh, sure it will."  But I know this is not the case.  I've tried it many times.  Oh, you could pound it in, maybe and break the needle and/or the shank.  


I have been tuning a piano twice a year for about 3 years. About
    once a year my customer complains that the piano is too bright, so I
    voice it down and make it a little more mellow than he likes because
    he say it will be bright again in about 6 months. He wants something
    more permanent. I hate to change these hammers because they still
    look good. What's the consensus on steaming? Does it last?

    Al Guecia

    It lasts for a while.  Depends on how heavily the piano is played, how humid or dry the climate is, etc. 
    It's annoying, confusing, frustrating how sketchy the whole subject of voicing still is, after all these seminars, articles, etc.:   "Yes, you can use Vise Grips, carefully, judiciously, on the sides of the hammer."  "No, you can't use Vise Grips; they'll "destroy" the felt."  (Yet the commercially available "voicing pliers" aren't much different.)  "Steaming is the way to go."  "Steaming has no lasting effect."  "Soaking with alcohol is the only effective way to soften hammers."  "Don't soak the hammers with anything."  Yamaha says not to voice on the strike point.  At Steinway, they rountinely voice the strike point.   "File hammers from the shoulders working up toward the crown."  "No, file hammers from one side working all the way around the crown to the other side."  
And so on, back and forth, never anything for sure.  We're left to just experiment on customers' or our own pianos, stabbing in the dark.  For every FAQ about voicing, there are at least 5 answers, none of them really agreeing -- it always depends on the set of hammers at hand.  It's almost as bad as the supposed cures for hiccups:  "Have someone unexpectedly scare you."  "No, put a bag over your head and count to 50."  "No, take a teaspoonful of sugar."  "No, take ten deep breaths."
    I dread voicing.  It's always a crapshoot.  
    --David Nereson, RPT
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