Flexible collodion for voicing hammers

[Horace Greeley]

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Ron,


At 07:08 AM 12/8/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Hmm. My colleague, the imitable (who says there's a God?) Grijalva, 
>insists on providing our shop pantry with lacquer bearing the *least* 
>amount of solids. Is this a contradiction? Before arriving at this august 
>institution, I hadn't given much thought to lacquer composition. The 
>presence (or lack) of solids must bear on how hard the stuff cures, yes?

Ah, yes....another area in which Bob and I, err, ah, disagree.

No contradiction, per se - difference in style.

I learned lacquer (among other useful things, some related to pianos) from 
Bill Hupfer and Franz Mohr over a long period of time, and have seen no 
reason to substantively deviate from their instruction.  (FWIW, both of 
them preferred at the time, when any hardener was needed at all, 
shellac.  I used it for a long time...basically until customer/technician 
complaints about "discoloration" became too onerous.  Never seemed to 
affect the tone adversely...)

This really does open up the whole Pandora's Box issue of what/why/when/how 
much/etc does one use.  Some pianos "want" a very thin, light 
application.  Others simply demand being loaded to the eyes with the 
heaviest stuff you can find.  My inherited preference for automotive 
lacquer stems from the usage - that is, Bill and Franz both spent most of 
their time working on instruments that had to be heard above orchestras 
from the back of a 3000 seat hall.  Since this was in the days when people 
still knew what pianos were supposed to sound like, loading up the hammers 
with plastic goo was not an option.  The resulting sound is simply too 
thin, too reedy sounding, and too lacking in fundamental to carry as other 
than a "splat"...doesn't even qualify as what we used to call "glassy".

In any event, what most technicians seem to miss is that no voicing 
technique, however brutal or subtle, can bring out what is not there to 
begin with...one can make it louder or softer, more or less harsh...but, 
bad tone is built in before the name goes on (to paraphrase the old Zenith 
commercial).

> >Sad - maybe I'll just have to pour this out somewhere EPA-safe....
>
>Safe from EPA scrutiny?

 From your lips to my ears.

Cheers!

Best regards to all.

Horace

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