Just curious about your hammers

[antares]

Hi Ari Isaac,

As I am specialized in tuning, regulation, and voicing, I am always
interested to hear about 'special' piano hammers.
These last years I get my hammers from Renner in Stuttgart.
They also make the hammers for Steinway, Hamburg and mainly use Wurzen felt.
I am usually quite content with their quality. The felt is not extremely
hard and a first voicing usually takes me about 1,5 hour including the
filing of the hammers and vacuuming.
Could you give me an opinion about the difference between your hammers and
the ones I buy from Renner?
Just curious....


Antares,

Amsterdam, Holland

where music is, no harm can be

> From: "isaacah" <isaacah@sprint.ca>
> Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 14:07:54 -0400
> To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Subject: Hammermaker's corner 1.
> 
> Hammer maker's corner.
> 
> 
> 
> ARI ISAAC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I realize some people have read my Hammermaker's corner series onc CAUT but
> there are others who have not and may, perhaps, find it of interest.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is 1979. I have been running a tuning and piano rebuilding practice since
> 1960. I was getting a bit bored with aspects of that. I'd worked, for two
> years in a piano factory owned by Aeolian which saw to it that entire forests
> of magnificent maple, birch, walnut and spruce were liquidated to produce
> never would be pianos. After I couldn't take that any longer I'd started my
> own practice and there the choice was mine to a far greater degree. In 1969 I
> started making my own, then others' bass strings but hammers were a bain. I
> knew the tone I wanted and I tried every hammer available at this time, 1960
> to 1978 or so. American, German, Asian. none of them made it to my standards.
> I will not spend hours voicing hammers to get the minimum color range I want,
> I refuse. 
> 
> I was griping about it so much and so frequently that my friend, Tom Hathaway,
> a cool, aristocratic Bostonian somewhat soiled by rubbing elbows with the 60s,
> said one day,
> 
> -why don't you make your own hammers? You're crazy enough to do it-.
> 
> It was said in a tone of "stop complaining, if you're so unhappy about it,
> let's see you do something about it".
> 
> The words stuck, somehow and gradually, fantastically, as it seems now, became
> a challenge. I had, of course, no clear idea how to go about making hammers
> but more and more I wanted to. The thought of translating my idea of piano
> tone, musical tone, to a tangible that music lovers could enjoy, partake of my
> own idea of tone - that was exciting. Just maybe I could contribute something
> gratifying to a few people.
> 
> I did know I needed a hammer press. Where to start? I found a hammer press
> maker in England who wanted $40000 for a press that looked like, when he sent
> photos, a toy, that one was a no-no, next. I called Marty Negron at Ronson,
> whose hammers I'd used and found wanting, and asked him if I could come down,
> bring my machinist and make drawings of one of his hammer presses, just think
> of the cheak, I can hardly believe it myself but, by then I was so taken with
> the idea that nothing would stop me. Marty, the gentleman that he was, said I
> was crazy to want to make hammers, that one went out the other ear immediately
> but, yes, I could come down and take drawings.
> 
> I called my then machinist, Dave a Yorkshire pudding and roast beef stufed,
> kindly but slightly ineffectual, affecting an Oxford accent but very pleasant
> Englishman and invited him for a plane trip down to Ronson Hammers in the New
> York Catskills to take drawings of a hammer press.
> 
>