feasable voicing tool modification??

[ryan sowers]

Squeezing the hammers with a pair of 5wr vice-grips
modeled after Bill Spurlocks is a very helpfull tool
in voicing uprights (and grands). 
--- Dave Nereson <davner@kaosol.net> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <Alpha88x@aol.com>
> To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 10:54 AM
> Subject: feasable voicing tool modification??
> 
> 
> > Greetings,
> >
> >              I got a really good idea!  I have
> done about 5 hammer carding
> &
> > needling jobs for customers who own old, old
> uprights and I take the
> actions
> > home to card and do basic deeep shoulder needling.
> >
> >               However, when I return the action 
> to the piano, I find I
> need
> > to custom or individually needle the hammers to
> tonally match/blend the
> > octaves, or rather, make the side by side notes
> sound homogonous/alike
> next to one
> > another, blending the sections.
> >
> >                With the action in place, when I
> attemp this, my voicing
> > tool's handle gets in the way and is too big to
> use in the small space
> between the
> > hammers and the strings. I don't like the idea of
> swinging the action back
> and
> > forth to needle, listen, needle, listen...etc.
> >
> >                The great idea is to dismantle the
> voicing tool, saw off
> the
> > 1" or so handle insert thereby having just the
> needle (cartridge?) head in
> hand
> > so that I can work quickly with the upright action
> in place. Is this a
> good
> > idea?
> >
> > Julia Gottchall,
> > Reading, PA
> >
> 
>     Yeah, the Yamaha tool is OK, but not great.  As
> Corte S. said, it's more
> for touch-up voicing and surface "sugar coating"
> since Yamaha hammers are
> usually too hard to be able to get a needle in very
> far, never mind three of
> them.  I just have one needle in mine and use it to
> poke right into the
> string grooves.  And my knuckles get scraped a lot. 
> But there's nothing
> else out there designed for upright hammers that I
> know of, except the
> voicing tool with the pivoting head -- but it
> doesn't pivot enough.
>     Been trying side voicing lately -- see last
> month's Journal, I believe.
>     What I end up doing a lot is taking the action
> out, laying it on the
> carpet, putting a block of wood under the hammer
> tails, and stabbing with my
> big (Yamaha) voicing tool.  Then put it back in and
> see how much effect it
> had.  Repeat. Listen. Maybe repeat again, or go to
> the smaller tool for
> touch-up, or use ViseGrips, but ya gotta be real
> careful with those-- it's
> easy to go too far.  It's awkward, working down on
> the floor on your knees,
> but I don't know a better way, unless you bring a
> long a portable folding
> table or something ...
>     --David Nereson, RPT
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> 


=====
Ryan Sowers, RPT  Puget Sound Chapter
Pianova Piano Service
Olympia, WA


		
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