In a message dated 2/17/2009 2:58:51 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, JD at Pianomaker.co.uk writes: ....It has been suggested that there is an old way of making hammers with one felt, which is good and a 1990s way of making hammers with another felt that is bad and that we now have the second coming of the good old way with the good old felt. This is pure nonsense. .... Yes, well put, although I think that's overstating the recent conversation somewhat. No denying that some felts are better than others, but hope springs eternal, and every decade or so word goes around of a "magic felt". Royal George, VFG, Wurzen, American, and Bacon felts have all been touted as superior at one time or another. I have my favorites and am open to others, but there are a number of good felts on the market, depending on how they are handled by the maker, the technician, and the soundboard. They differ in weight, density, heat, and pressing, but the good ones, loose or tight, all share one characteristic: high elasticity. Elasticity is what stores energy in the hammer and allows a good voicer to control the time over which that energy is released back into the string, with as little loss as possible. Fibers that have retained their natural elasticity through the felting process, and are not packed too tightly together to move, allow us to keep the losses to a minimum, while varying the tone through manipulation of weight and the distribution of density. I still remember being amazed at the hammers on an old Knabe, which were amazingly soft and spongy, yet produced a big, solid but varied sound. Admittedly, the various good quality felts don't behave exactly the same, but we are lucky enough to be able to choose for each piano on the basis of weight and density; to have the most control over the infinite tradeoffs among action leverage, soundboard response, room acoustics, durability, client preference. and our favorite way of working. Because the same set of hammers will sound completely different on different pianos, we still need to know how to voice. Certainly we can most easily produce the sound we want with one type of hammer rather than another, but there's a great deal of overlap for the skilled voicer. Bob Davis **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090217/883ccff8/attachment.html>
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