reply to Ilvedsen on yamaha hmrs

[Erwinpiano]

   Hi David
Sorry bout misspelling on your name .To answer your specific ? on shrink
wrapping haamers I thought a definition is in order . I consider a hammer
that  thas been made so hard as to be inpenitrble to needles or ones  that
even after much voicing soon return to there  prior ear shattering ways to
bear my deragatory term shrink wrapped . I am sure there are a variety of
ways to do that .The one most familiar to me is the practice of introducing
steam into the felt as it is being pressed and under pressure.This practice
removes much or most of resilience , densifys the felt to the point of being
unusable. Now however that is being done  at yam. or anywhere else would be
interesting to be sure and other opinions and insights and on sight
observations would be enlightening .But  no matter how its being done we
still find a product as described above an impediment to voicing  and
voicing stability. Would you agree? If voicing these hammers  is so labor
intensive and  difficult to achieve optimum results two things come to mind
. Who pays for all that voicing and  fine instruments such as yamaha often
are not heard at there best.Now I actually did't start all this dialogue to
say that all yam. hammers are this way or that this maker is the only one
with the above described difficultys and it is also not to say that I don't
enjoy the piano or my associations with this particular company. I'm just
expressing day to day frustrations of trying to create a full piano tone
with a type of hammer that is blocking my goals. There ,I think that's
enough backpeddling . I do have my favorite hammers that I use and would be
happy to share this info another time.But being primarily a rebuilder and
remanufacturer of instruments I try to use hammers that are easy to voice
and voicing stable so I'm not continually being called back for tonal
complaints. I't ain't good for business. sincerely Dale Erwin