[CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers - follow up

[David Love]

I've heard similar reports on occasion for the prehardened hammers which has
prompted some to insist on getting them raw.  The problems I've heard have
more been that the hammers were too hard and people were not able to voice
them down enough especially through the tenor.  If the hammers lack power
after the prelacquering then sometimes adding additional lacquer can present
problems as the core felt becomes impervious to additional applications and
it just stays near the surface.  This can cause a very bright tone when
played p - mf but when you try and get to fff the hammer collapses and the
power seems to bottom out prematurely.  

For performance Steinways I'm more inclined to go to a different hammer, a
more fully tensioned and harder pressed hammer such as a Hamburg Renner or
even an Abel Select such as Pianotek sells or maybe the Abel naturals from
Brooks.  The ability to release tension to the crown on that type of hammer
plus the greater out of the box firmness obviates the use of lacquer (except
maybe on the top most hammers) and gives greater power without the downside
of over lacquering.  

The softer, lacquered hammer is fine for their smaller pianos whose upper
end demands aren't as great and whose scale tensions also argue for
something more flexible.  Even there, however, I would still ask for them
unhardened so that you can control that yourself or use a Bacon felt hammer
from Ronsen which gives a very similar texture with the use of lacquer.  The
difference being that the Ronsen hammer starts out a bit firmer than the
unlacquered Steinway hammer and so the application of lacquer need only be a
fairly modest one.  

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Israel
Stein
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 8:14 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers - follow up

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