Used hammers for upright piano project

[Farrell]

Hello Claudia. I have a complete upright action that I've been tripping over in my shop for the past few weeks. It is from a 1920s Starr upright (the piano I learned to tune on - or almost anyway). It is in good to excellent condition for it age. I'm quite sure the hammers have most of their felt.

I would encourage you to put new hammers on your piano. If the board and bridges are in acceptable shape, simply restringing the bass can do wonders for an old beater. Soundwise, new bass strings and new hammers will often get you 70% or 80% of the way back to how the piano sounded 80 years ago (what I mean, is biggest bang for the buck).

If you think you really want to use used hammers, let me know how many bass notes your piano has and I'll see what I have.

What neck of the woods are you located?

Terry Farrell
Tampa, Florida
mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Claudia Cimenti" <claudia_cimenti@mail.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 5:52 PM
Subject: Used hammers for upright piano project


> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to restore a vintage upright to playing condition, for purely 
> educational purposes.
> 
> I need to replace the hammers. Most hammers are worn down to the underfelt!
> 
> I was wondering if someone on this list might have a used set of upright 
> hammers available that they would want to part with. I really do not want 
> to spend $130+ for a brand new set of hammers for this old piano at this 
> point. It would be ok if the hammers are worn, need reshaping, have no or 
> broken shanks, etc, etc. The striking distance was nearly imposssible to 
> even guess, but I venture it was 2 3/8 ".
> 
> Please feel fee to Email me personally at claudia_cimenti@mail.com if you 
> can think of something.
> 
> Thank you very much!!
> /Claudia
> 
> PS: I hope that with this post I did not overstep the focus of this list. 
> If so, please accept my apologies. /C
>