Ric, I have been following this thread also, but I'm not ready the buy into using shanks to even the SW. I find your second paragraph to be more down the line of thought I use. The piano is supposed to be a percussion instrument. Percussionists are very particular about their sticks and mallets. I approach the shank as a drum stick. Each shank makes its own pitch when tapped. It is hard to hear for some, but they differ. I sequence the shanks from lowest pitch to highest pitch in the treble. Once the underlying "noise" from the shank is sequenced then I weigh off the hammers to create a smooth SW from hammer to hammer. I don't end up with the problems others talk about with the strike line. I have never checked to see if there is a correlation between the shank weight and the pitch. I know there are faults to this approach, but I see faults to the other approaches. Who among us is faultless? Also, since I rebuild all my pianos with the Wapin Piano Bridge I don't have problems with the hammerline being "funkified". Tim Coates On Feb 15, 2008, at 2:14 PM, Richard Brekne wrote: > Timely post... I just got back from an evening sorting session of a > standard set of shanks from Renner. Lowest weight was 1.47 grams > and highest weight was 2.14 grams. I sort them in ascending order > for each size (width) and after weighing my dead weight hammer > weights do a spread sheet sort on the hammers to make the best > match with the strike weights. Saves me all kinds of work evening > out finished Strike Weights. > > I'm not exactly sure how this eases my voicing work.... somehow > seems counter intuitive that the heaviest hammer matched with the > lightest shank will voice similar to a neighbor hammer which by > happenstance has the lightest hammer and heaviest shank. > > I do run a check on the upper treble with a sounding block before > sinking any needles in. Nice to identify any rouge shanks before I > get started. > > Cheers > RicB > > > Jim and Alan, > You guys have probably thought of this but I thought I'd mention > it anyway > because I haven't seen it as part of this thread. > Calibrating the strikeweight from at least note 52 up before > assessing the > hammerline makes what you hear make more sense. I glue my line on > straight > with a calibrated strike weight, after sorting shanks by weight, > and > then I > seem to have less need to vary the strikeline. > I don't have any hard data from the way I used to do it before. I > think the > real difference comes from the sorting of the shanks as they can > vary a > whole gram or more. Calibrating strike weight without sorting > the shanks > really makes alot of unnecessary work and can make for some funny > looking > hammers in the treble section. > At least this is something to consider. My treble voicing issues > have become > considerably reduced by doing it this way. I think that before I > used this > procedure I was more inclined to funkify my line than currently, > not > that I > don't. Maybe I just feel like I get a better result overall. And > maybe it's > actually less funkification. I wish I could prove it but I wasn't > looking > for that particular improvement so I didn't do a good before and > after. > Anyway there's 2 more cents. > Chris Solliday > >
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