Hammer Strike Line-Grand

Richard Brekne Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no
Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:24:19 +0200


Hi Gordon

You are certainly going to need more commentary then I can provide, 
especially if this turns out to be something related to the soundboard / 
bridge... which I suppose it very well could end up being.  The 
abrubtness of the change from plenty of sustaiin to near none seems a 
bit odd....You did bring up the voicing card... tho you used a new (left 
over) hammer... there is no guarantee that it was any harder then the 
old ones..  I suppose you could always double check by lacuering the 
heck out of your left over and doing the check again.. maybe switch Eb7 
with E7 hammer as well... just to see. Its always possible somebody 
needled the heck out of just those notes to quiet them down at some 
point... and with use the things just mushed out... ya never knows :)

Course if this piano is in the customers home... then you cant just come 
over ever other day and dink around ... looks bad.... grin.  You have to 
have a pretty good idea what you are looking for and how to fix it. 

I suppose you should let us know some particulars about the string 
lengths, backscale length, bearing angle... and that kind of stuff as 
well. The more we know, the more likely somebody will hit on a likely cause

Cheers
RicB..


Gordon Holley wrote:

>Hi Ric.
>The transition from Eb7 to E7 is abrupt, right NOW.  Sound volumn, sustain .
>. as though I was using a hard cotton swab
>on a noodle to strike the strings.  My Accu-Tuner III reads the fact that
>I'm playing the E7, just faintly though, . . no bright red lights.
>I did shape all hammers, and they do look pretty white and smooth.  I used
>200, 400, 1000, 1500 & 2000 wet/dry grit.  10 strokes each direction to the
>strike point at 1:00  and 11:00 oclock, with the 10th pass coming across the
>strike point of the hammer and down.
>When I got up in the upper treble section I backed off from 10 to 8 passes,
>and started with 400 grit.
>And I did not have a lot of felt coming off the hammers.  All strokes were
>straight with a light non-eggressive pull, in other words, I wasn't
>digging down on each pass.
>Back to you Ric, for your comments.
>Regards, Gordon
>
>
>
>  
>
>>Hi Gordon..
>>
>>Sounds to me like you have pretty well established that the dead thudish
>>sound has nothing to do with the strike line... yes ? That means
>>something else in in the way. You could always try changeing a few
>>strings and the like.. but I doubt that will make a lot of difference.
>>You may just have a piano thats dead up there. No sustain points in the
>>direction of a bridge/soundboard that simply sucks up all the strings
>>energy and reflects none of it back. Could be a host of reasons for that
>>being the case.....
>>
>>One question... is the transition from Eb7 to E7 and above abrubt... or
>>is is a bit smoothed ?
>>
>>Cheers
>>RicB
>>
>>Gordon Holley wrote:
>>
>>    
>>


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