feasable voicing tool modification??

[Dave Nereson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Alpha88x@aol.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: feasable voicing tool modification??


> Greetings,
>            Why would one squeeze the hammers with a vice grips for
voicing?  Or is the vice grips tool of which you speak,  have a special
attachment
or something? I am assuming that squeezing hammers would help to soften
them.
> Julia,
> Reading, PA

    They are Vise Grips (they grip like a vise; vices are bad habits).  You
can set the adjusting screw so that the jaws will not close all the way -- 
that way it's easier to keep from squeezing too deeply.  The hammers are
squeezed to soften them, or to force the felt to loosen up a bit.  I use
them only for hammers that are extremely hard and bangy, jangly, or
glassy-sounding.  The ones that are designed or modified for voicing have
jaw faces with a convex bulge on them -- about the size of a split pea,
maybe a little larger.  This helps squeeze only the interior, or inner part
of the hammer shoulder, rather than deforming the outer surface also, which
the flat jaws do a little.  [If you can figure out a way to saw a steel
bearing ball in half, or maybe smash some cheap glass beads with a hammer
and see if any come out roughly hemispherical, or maybe even use actual
split peas or black-eyed pea halves and epoxy them onto a small pair of
ViseGrips, that might work.  Or just buy the tool.]
    I know lots of techs have reservations about Vise Grips.  One told me
they "destroy the felt."  I just don't see how they can.  They might destroy
the resiliency if you go too far, but you can go too far with needles or
juice or steaming also!  Somebody else said you could pull the felt off the
moulding.  If
you do that, you're REALLY doing it wrong!  Now, up it the high treble, it's
next to impossible to use them without crushing the moulding, and because
the felt is so thin.  So you switch to a needle-type voicing tool.  Vise
Grips don't leave prick holes in the hammer surface and don't cut the
fibers, and they give immediate results -- longer-lasting, I think, than
needle voicing.
    I usually point the jaws approximately toward the tip of the moulding
(but higher in the treble they might be pointing to about 1/8" to 1/4" inch
behind the moulding tip) at around 10, 11 o'clock and 1, 2 o'clock and have
the jaws adjusted so they squeeze the felt in only about 1/16" on each side.
If you don't need to soften the tone much, squeeze less, and farther away
from the crown.  For rock-hard hammers, squeeze harder (in farther) and up
closer to the tip.
    They're mainly for gross tone adjustments on really hard hammers -- not
for fine concert voicing.
    --David Nereson, RPT