On Apr 10, 2009, at 7:12 PM, Delwin D Fandrich wrote: > I have observed this on a number of older pianos. Some of those > hammers were almost ridiculously soft and resilient yet produced > wonderful tone that should be bright enough for anyone short of the > profoundly deaf. And they seemed to last forever. Much longer than > the lacquered granite that passes for hammers on many contemporary > pianos. > > ddf > I recently ran across an old Steinway service manual, apparently from the 50s and 60s (it has no date), wherein the voicing instructions note that the hammers are deep needled in the shoulders in the factory, hence the technician won't need to do much there (and warning against over-needling). Not a peep about hardeners. Tucked into the manual (which is a short version, meant for free distribution, not like the later loose leaf one) was a mimeograph about teflon bushings and their treatment. So I am guessing I got it from George Defebaugh around 1980, as I attended an all day session he did that year. I remember he talked in detail about how to deal with teflon bushings, and also about lacquering hammers, recommending shoulders only, none in the crown. So the modern myth some of the Steinway folks have come up with, that they started using lacquer when they had stopped using shellac, seems a little tenuous. And the evidence of actual old hammers makes it even more plain that reliance on lacquer is no older than maybe the 70s or so. Which isn't to say that the basement folks might not have been using some hardeners for custom work in the concert halls for somewhat longer. I'm still thinking there is a connection between lacquer and the trend toward heavier and heavier hammers, which started well before the "NY Improved" ratio re-design (hence the "super-leaded" keys). Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090410/2b9b0d33/attachment.html>
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