Hearing Aids and Voicing

[Danny Moore]

jpiesik@arinc.com wrote:

       I reshaped hammers on a Poole 1940ish s
(yup, I did).
  <<snip>>  I talked to her after the shaping, and she says it is now
  too harsh/bright for her.  <<snip>>   Then she mentioned her hearing
  aids - she's 72.  <<snip>>  Should I turn those hammers into mashed
  potatoes to please her?  Something tells me to please the client,
  but something else tells me to avoid turning the piano into a fluff
  ball. . .

John,
I'd say you've made an astute evaluation of the problem . . . most
hearing aids begin to roll off the lows pretty radically below 200 Hz,
which is not very low on a piano scale.  We have to guess that she has
sensorineural hearing loss, probably common presbycusis (no, that's not
the church she goes to) since they are attempting to correct it with
hearing aids.  Presbycusis is where the cochlea (little hair cells) in
the inner ear begin to die and are not replaced as a result of the aging
process.

Yeah, I know you didn't ask for a biology lesson; bear with me, it is
relevant.  Usually, the high frequency content above 4000 Hz goes even
before the low frequency content.  Evidently, her hearing aids are
amplifying the high frequency content and she has not lost all
sensitivity to these frequencies.

You're right, she's hearing too much of the upper partials and not
enough fundamental and lower partials.  Since it's likely that she has
lost some of her ability to hear the higher frequencies, I suspect you
won't have to soften the hammers as much as you would if YOU were
listening for the upper partials.  Most likely, a slight needling will
be all that's required.  The brightness will probably disappear for her
long before it does for you.  I would think that you would want her with
you as you begin voicing, after all, you've already made it sound good
to you, now you've got to discover what sounds good to her.

Bottom line:  Make her happy.  At her age, she'll never buy another
piano and I'm sure her little spinet gives her as much pleasure as
anything in her life.  It certainly doesn't matter about resale value or
what the next owner might think.  If you make the piano sound like she
wants it to, you will forever be her hero.  If you don't, you'll be that
"young kid (even if you're 60 years old) who came in here and made my
piano sound like something Little Richard would play."

Happy fluffing. . .

Danny Moore
Houston Chapter