Pre-hung hammers

[Thomas D. Seay, III]

>Keith,
>
>   I have considered using pre-hung hammers, but I've been concerned about
>the accuracy of the strike point, especially in the high treble. Did you have
>any problem there? I've always been told that most American brands are not
>"that" consistent in manufacture. In other words, the ideal strike point could
>vary "a silly millimeter" from piano to piano. Of course, a few hammers could
>always be reglued without too much trouble if that were the case. What are
>your thoughts on this.
>   With so many pianos to take care of, it would sure be a time saver,
>especially if one needed to replace many sets of hammers. The vast majority
>of our pianos are at that position.
>   Because he is not expecting to have enough money to replace 105 or so
>pianos, plus the 2, maybe 3 more concert grands we will need, plus additional
>rooms of all types, I'
>have been asked to start doing major/minor rebuilding work, especially on the
>20 Steinway L's we have: restringing, dampers, hammers, etc. It seems like
>that would save me a good bit of time. Comments?
>
>Thanks,
>Avery Todd
>University of Houston
>atodd@uh.edu

We prefer boring our own hammers on the performance pianos we have at our
school. You can take string height measurments and get the hammers bored
exactly to a specific piano. Additionally, you can change the angle
slightly, if desired. Pre-bored sets are certainly fine for other uses. We
usually order pre-bored sets of hammers instead of pre-hung ones for our
classroom and practice pianos, because we can then change shanks & flanges
easily if/when we run into geometry problems. The only pre-hung hammers we
use are Yamaha grand hammers, and they really do save you lots of time.

BTW, we bought one of those Renner hammer boring jigs for our shop. It
takes a bit of getting used to, but it really does work well, especially
for Renner hammers (because of the width of the jig).

Good luck,


Tom Seay
t.seay@mail.utexas.edu
The University of Texas at Austin