words technical

[A440A@aol.com]

Keith writes:

<< Dear Sirs,
That would be easily done if the people who left one list for the 
other would not bring their baggage with them.
CAUT has been doing just fine. The comments below serve no purpose 
whatsoever.>>

I agree.  I would hate to see the signal to noise ratio on CAUT render this 
list as bloated and hard to use as the other one!!!! 
    I also keep proposing that any posting to a list should  be of some 
technical merit, so here's this one.

   The STeinway hammers are now arriving from the factory pre-doped.  I have 
had two sets in the last month and they were not at all the same!  The first, 
for a model A, were large enough to put on a D, and they were already 
crystal-bright, <sigh>  The customer was having me replace the hammers 
because they were too brassy, so I ended up needling the heck out of a new 
set of hammers.  They felt like sugar cubes.  Since I do my own boring, there 
was no way to really tell what they sounded like before crossing the 
drill-press Rubicon.
   The next set was soft, but I think they will play-in very nicely, (though 
I do need to help the low bass out a little, sniff-sniff).   
   So, my question is this.  In a heavy use setting, like on the school 
stages,  how long does a new set of these things last before becoming 
difficult to keep a round sound?  Has anybody "rinsed" a new set with acetone 
or something to take some of the sting out before the accupuncture?  
   My normal doping of new Steinway hammers used to begin with a side 
application of 6:1 that was heavy enough to just reach the core right about 
at the tip of the molding.  Then I could listen and add more a little farther 
up the shoulder to get what I wanted. This left me with a small wedge of 
unlacquered felt under the strike point that would, with about 20 hours of 
playing, really give me a broad range of tone, from a defined mellowness at 
pp to an orchestral crash at full FFF. Not only that, but I could keep it 
that way through several filings and reshaping!  I fear that with the new 
procedure up there in New York, which I understand to be soaking the entire 
hammer set with 4:1 before shipping,  this malleability and control will be 
lost. 
   Anybody have a set that is aging and can tell me where these new ones go?  
 
Thanks, 
Ed Foote RPT 



Ed Foote RPT 
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html