---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment When talking about lacquer vs. non, or voicing up softer hammers vs. voicing down firmer, I think there's a tendency to claim superiority of one method over the other, maybe especially among our European colleagues. I don't see it that way at all. Any voicing method has six goals: power, sustain, color range, evenness, durability, and efficiency. However, pianos are all different, as are their owners, their locations, their tonal concept, and their amount and style of use. This is the reason that no manufacturer can make a perfect hammer, and the reason that we need as large a bag of tricks as possible to serve our clients effectively. I use both styles of hammer, depending upon the client, the piano, and the situation. I have heard hammers of both styles that sounded STUNNING. To say that lacquer ruins a hammer, or that it renders needles useless, or that the tone of a lacquered hammer must be either harsh or linear, bespeaks improper use of this tool. To say that a company with at least 100 years of use of hardeners is on the wrong path would be an overstatement, to say the least. There is more than one rich, valid, satisfying tonal concept, and I am glad to have access to both styles of hammer. Some voicers are more experienced than others, some hammers (in both styles) are better than others, and poor use of any tool is a bad thing. Improper use of lacquer can ruin a hammer, just as poor technique with needles can. Juice in the right place can increase power; in the wrong place can actually reduce it. Same with needles. Juice raises the stiffness of a hammer (somewhat selectively, depending upon where it is applied), but does not need to reduce its resilience, if it is used to stiffen fibers rather than glue them together. Needles do not work the same way in the NY Steinway-style hammer as they do in the denser style, but they do work. If anyone has seen the classes that Dale Erwin and/or I taught, you may remember our putting both styles side-by-side and voicing them to sound the same, or mighty close. In some classes we put hammers from twelve different pianos in one octave, and voiced them similarly. While I won't claim absolute invisibility, I think most people were at least a little surprised. We did mention the fact that a particular result might be easier either to achieve or to maintain with a particular hammer, but our point was that appropriate technique, pinpointed by an understanding of what the hammer was calling for, could go a long way toward evening out differences. A voicing method must do what you want, and only what you want, at the lowest total cost. Bob Davis ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/d8/fa/43/55/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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