Comments interspersed led by * David Love www.davidlovepianos.com Daniel Carlton wrote: I’ve barely done any voicing at all, but I’ve read quite a lot about it, so I’m going to take a stab at it. This is a good little pop quiz for me, so any feedback would be great. Significant or not? Yes. So you took a blade and made a slice from the strike point to the core? It looks like there’s a lot more tension in the felt on the right because it pulled apart so much further; this would make it a harder hammer, less spring and give than the one on the left. * Yes sliced open with a razor blade. Yes, more tension in the one on the right. However, the one on the right is much softer. There is more tension but the felt is less dense. I would say the one on the right is springier. So tension and density. Are they like power and sustain in a soundboard system, inversely related? If you increase density do you necessarily sacrifice tension? What do these likely sound like? Left - probably round, full, well-balanced tone, more mellow than the one on the right Right - probably brighter, typical of a hammer found on asian pianos *Just the opposite. The one on the right is more mellow, darker, warmer. The one on the left much brighter, harder attack. How will they voice? Left - easier to penetrate, probably won’t take as much to tame Right - harder to penetrate, will be hard to keep toned down (that is, if that’s what you’re going for) *Again, just the opposite, right is easier to penetrate with needles, more stable voicing, might even need to come up little. The left one is much denser, will require much needle work to prepare, will not be as stable. Is it heat or the fibers themselves that cause this? I don’t know. Maybe both? If you’re talking about whether the heat causes differences in hardness/density(?) and voicing, then yes from everything I’ve ever heard. *That's a question that's more difficult to answer without some better analysis of the felt and the pressing. The question really is, did these two hammers start out the same and were rendered different simply by the amount of heat or the method of pressing? Or was there some difference in the felt to begin with, or both. In other words was the inherent tension in the felt destroyed by heat? Or was there a lack of tension in the felt on the left to begin with and how did the felting process contribute if that's the case. Would these hammers react the same way if they had undergone the same amount of heat treatment during pressing? Doesn’t it depend on how the slab of felt is formed to start with (before being pressed around the core)? *see above -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: IMG00264-20110705-1228.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69554 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110706/67bfba22/attachment-0001.jpg>
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