Hello all hammers hangers. I've used the Spurlock jig, but I found that especially in the top trebble hammers, if the shoulders are on a perfect straight line, the strike points are not and vice versa. The Spurlock jig assumes that the piece of felt where the hammers come from is perfectly tapered to begin with, and stays so after pressing, which I found was not always the case in the sets I hung. Also, the straight line in all 88 hammers assumes that the plate/agraffees/capo arrangement is precise enough to place the resulting correct strike points in that straight line (sorry for my approximate english), which I also found not always to be true, especially between the agraffee section and the capo section. The best striking point is easy to determine by hearing the sound of the note, and when you place the last hammer in agraffee section and the first of the capo section by ear, you could sometimes notice that they don't line up with the rest. Same at other sections borderline, at each side of a strut. Of course, hanging the hammers in different sections at even slightly different distance from center pin induces geometry discrepancies, but, if not extreme, I found those easier to deal with than voicing out the transitions between sections. So I like setting the first and last hammer in each section at the correct angle, copied from old hammers, and at the place they sound best, then line up the hammer moldings in that section with a straight edge put under the shanks, and eyeball the strike points to be in straight line in that section, using a glue that doesn't set too quickly so I still can make slight adjustments when looking at the whole section. What do you think ? Best regards. Stéphane Collin.
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