<html> <body> <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">   These are pianos with original hammers that have probably never had a needle stuck in them. Is this a hammer/voicing problem? Dean May              cell 812.239.3359</blockquote>Hi Dean,                 You are missing many opportunities, and the key points in tone building. The needles are the last thing you go to, in tone building, and frequently there is no need to use them if the following is followed. 1. Chip the piano to A442. 2. Quickly pluck all back scale segments, and clean up any obvious anomalies. One of the strings of a unison duplex A tone flat. (5mins) 3. Lift all strings.(10 to 12.4 mins) 4. Level strings.  I use a magnetic bar that spans 3 notes. 5. Pianos that have a bunch of false strings. I will lightly use a pin set punch and lightly tap all bridge pins. The piano will be very close to A440. A 15 yr old piano WILL NEED hammer shaping and some basic regulation, count on it. 6. Basic re shape and resetting the hammer line. ( 1 hr.) 7. Iron the re shaped hammers to set the fluffed up felt. 8. Fit the hammers to the strings to eliminate phasing.(30mins) 9. Fine tune piano. 10. Now you can evaluate the voicing needs. I will make one closing statement:  Leave the needles in your tool box, until the above has be done! I hope this is helpful. Roger PS. The times I allotted are for a skilled tech.  The customer should not have to pay for your learning proccess. </body> </html>