In these situations forgo the rule about no crown voicing and just deep needle all the way around the hammer including directly into the crown. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 12:05 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Press vs Stab voicing (was Re: The Importance of "Subject:") On Jun 11, 2010, at 10:03 PM, Ron Nossaman wrote: > I recently got the "opportunity" to voice down a Schafer & Sons > grand, to some semblance of tolerability. A hundred holes in the > shoulders didn't make a positive difference, nor did another 50 > closer to the crown. Side needling was equally useless Here we are talking about felt fibers that are so closely pressed, there is nowhere for the fibers to go if you insert needles. You end up with woodpecker holes. In that case, voice grips, steam, alcohol and water, alcohol and fabric softener, anything goes to get the darned fibers a bit apart initially. I have been pretty successful recently (last three years or so) saturating the shoulders (the area I want the needles to go into, not clear to the core) with alcohol and softener. Seems like 5:1 or even 4:1 alcohol (isopropyl 91% for convenience and a little water to mix with the softener) to softener (Downy no scent) is what is needed to do the trick. With the felt saturated, and let sit 15 - 20 minutes, needles often go in pretty slick where they would barely penetrate before. So you can do three needle work, deep with pretty fast action, and get the shoulders into a reasonable condition. Anyway, I was talking about hammers, not rocks <G>. But I think that, in fact, voice gripping spreads fibers with less damage to them (reasonable parameters of how you are using the tool) than needles. It does tend to misshape the hammer, though, and is hard to get predictable results. I've done my share of it, and it is a good technique to have available. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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