List, Having followed this thread, I was eager to try string levelling on an old Mason & Hamlin A this week. The hammers were fairly well worn. After gang sanding and some re-shaping and needling all the hammers, as well as seating strings on the bridge, the tone was much better. I would have next routinely checked the hammer fit to the strings. I had seen Wally Brooks demonstrate string levelling at the 1984 convention. Guess I thought it was only for new strings. Wouldn't have thought it would be needed on a 60 year old piano. But when I checked the level of the strings on the "A" I found about two thirds of them in the plain wire agraffe section to be out of level. On the out of level unisons there wasn't a whine or buzz or any particular problem in tuning the unisons. Rather, on this piano, the effect of the out of level strings was to make the tone weaker and far less clear than on the notes with level strings. I think that the aggregate effect of a bunch of unlevel strings is a high level of backround noise even when the piano is well tuned. After all, the energy from the hammer blow has to go somewhere. I characterize this backround noise as sounding 'wirey' or 'wooly'. It's the chaotic sound of a lot of little sounds that don't fit together. The aural equivalent of steel wool. Anyway, when I was finished with this Mason & Hamlin A, the customer played some Debussy and Beethoven. The result was the clearest sound of any piano I've done extensive work on. The chords and the music were there against a background of near silence. The lack of 'wireyness' was stunning, gratifying and humbling. Thanks to you who posted information on the list, I didn't try to fit the hammers to unlevel strings. Hammer fitting would have no doubt improved the sound a bit, but wouldn't have corrected a fundamental problem. Walter Sikora, RPT Chapel Hill, NC P.S. This piano sounded great with J. Coleman's 'Pure Fifths Tuning'!
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