[CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers - follow up

[Israel Stein]

Hello again,

For all of you who are claiming success with the pre-hardened Steinway 
hammers - how many of you have had success with them on a top-quality 
concert hall stage instrument? Which is the situation we found ourselves 
in her at SF State. I have used those hammers before also, with good - 
even excellent - results. In less demanding situations. But when it came 
to the very demanding concert hall use - the hammers, as delivered, fell 
short. They never delivered the volume that this instrument is capable 
of - pianists complained that it took too much work to get the volume 
they needed, and nothing we did could improve that. Flushing the 
hardener and starting over gave much more satisfactory results - both in 
terms of volume and tone color. Which tells me that having full control 
of the hardening process may work better than depending on what they do 
in the factory. Of course, there is always the possibility that this set 
of hammers is an exception - that for some reason it was overhardened at 
the factory. I still prefer, in the future, to put the lacquer where I 
want it if i need to use Steinway hammers and not depend on the 
factory's alleged 30-second soaking. As long as Steinway makes 
un-hardened hammers available - which I believe they do.

Israel Stein