[CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers - follow up

[Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel)]

Hi Israel,

We have 7 Ds here and I would be happy to have any of them on any stage - 2 are new NY instruments so I know they were pre-lacquered. 4 of the others were re-hammered within the past few years using Stanwood precision Touch Designs and I really can't remember if they were pre-lacquered hammers...my guess is that one of them probably is. My experience has been that the pre-soaked hammers behave in the same way in subsequent soakings that the older (recently older, I might add) NY hammers (they have increased in quality quite a bit in the last 5 years or so). The way your set behaved sounds really strange to me because as David Love said, the first application soaks right in all the way to the core in just a few seconds. On some sets I've even wondered if they were really soaked. Maybe you got a bum set or something. Both of the new Ds delivered last December needed more lacquer once thay got on our stages as opposed to the selection room and are now big and bold and ready for prime-time. I used 2:1 Acetone/lacquer from the top down till blended in at around C5 and 3:1 the rest of the way. The last D we have is a Hamburg which was delivered in March. I haven't had the opportunity to do any voicing on it yet since the halls have been very busy since it came. It is a lovely piano the way it is but the treble is thin compared to the NY Ds. I would never put lacquer in a hard-pressed hammer until I've tried all the regular techniques to no avail. I've found it extremely neccessary to match hammer hardness to weight...All these NY Ds have very heavy hammers and hence need a lot of juice...even 1:1 in the last octave. Light hammers get really nasty sounding if they are too hard.

It sounds like you've done the right thing for the set in question and I'm happy you were able to ressurect them!

Eric

________________________________________
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Israel Stein [custos3 at comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 11:14 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