>Have you installed a set of "soft" hammers on a Yamaha or >Kawai? Hi Newton, List, No, I haven't. The only Yamahas I've installed hammers in, the owners wanted them to sound like Yamahas. No Kawais either. I do have some general observations though. As I understand it, the relatively soft rim in the Yamaha requires a stiffer, heavier soundboard assembly to keep the rim from absorbing string energy too quickly. The thicker, heavier soundboard improves sustain, but diminishes volume. To jack up the volume to a marketable level (got to have POWER at all costs you know), hard and/or heavy hammers are required. The tonal result of this compound compromise cascade is quite familiar to all of us. I would think that putting Isaacs on a Yamaha would give you a more pleasing sound, with better dynamic control at the low end, and a fairly dramatic reduction of high end volume (which I wouldn't miss in the least - my ear plugs are getting tired). By the time you get down to the hammers, you're working with what the rest of the assembly has to give you. Of course it's this same series of stacked compensatory design specs that make it possible for Yamaha to produce pianos at high speed (and volume <G>), that are virtually interchangeably uniform in sound for each model. Ron N
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