BobDavis88@aol.com wrote: > 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 dont think so... in fact (aside from a bit of kidding around with Carl and Joe) I have gone out of my way to point out that they are two different approaches, each finding its own group of enthusiasts. > 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. No doubt about it. The trick is more to know which is appropriate at any given time... which I think David Love outlined in basics pretty well. > 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. Again... no one said anything about NY Steinway being on a wrong path... nor did anyone out of hand condemn lacquering or anything of the sort. I DID raise the question whether reaching for the bottle of juice had become a little too easy for many technicians....irregardless of where they live. Lacquer DOES ruin a hammer from the perspective of any future needling-up. But of course it does not <<ruin>> a hammer from some other perspective. > > 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. This is of course true. > Juice in the right place can increase power; in the wrong place can > actually reduce it. Same with needles. I dont think Juice in the right place can increase power... only more tension can do that... at least as I understand the word power. Juice can increase volume... loudness if you will. > 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. I dont really see how adding any significant amount of any type of hardner can avoid reducing a hammer resilience. The nature of how felt is made to begin with rather dictates this. If you coat a fiber with hardner, you dont just make it stiffer in one direction... you make it stiffer in all directions... longitudinally as well. Not to mention how the felting itself is affected. The most outspoken opponets of lacquer I know are American techs, and cite these kinds of reasonings. > Needles do not work the same way in the NY Steinway-style hammer as > they do in the denser style, but they do work. Again... if you apply any significant amount of hardener to the shoulders of any hammer... you can forget about needling up later. If you apply too much lacquer to the crown, then needles wont have any affect whatsoever. Just how well needles work in smothing out a NY hammer are entirely dependant on what kind of treatment those hammers have had to begin with. > 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. I agree you can get similiar results... but they are different characteristics. I have seen a few such classes... just as I have seen a class where two pianos were tuned... one to ET the other to HT and virtually no one heard the difference. What we can learn to discern is an entirely different matter. > 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. > Personally... I think the differences are good... and I am glad they cant be more evened out they is evident to me. Variety is a good thing... tho my own tastes prefer one type of hammer, I am the first to recognize the fact that the world if full of people with tastes other then my own. > A voicing method must do what you want, and only what you want, at the > lowest total cost. > > Bob Davis Cheers RicB
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