Taking on a piano voicing job including hammer shaping always makes me a bit nervous. One of the big hurdles is trying to get on the same page with the player via a discussion at the beginning of the process. I encouraged this teacher to describe where she feels the piano is now and then where she wanted it to be. I told her that the language is not specific, so feel free to use "word salad".

It is a decent Petrof grand that gets a lot of use between a few family members and then lighter use from the students. It was a single-day service last week and just got this today:

Ron!!! I just have to tell you- this piano sounds like heaven. Jude’s jazz piano teacher came the same afternoon you were here and he was nearly drooling.. it sounds so so good. Everything you play sounds good because it sounds so good. You could play a huge mess and it would still sound so good. (lots of emojis) I had a parent sit in on a lesson and he even commented afterwards on how beautiful the piano is, but even more, how beautiful it sounds. Sheeshhhhh. we are all enjoying it, every one of us!!!! Thank you thank you.

That is awesome!!!

I love those transformative maintenance things when, at the hands of good tech, the piano is turned into the best version of itself!!

It's always nice when people really appreciate the excellent work you've done....

Yes! It’s remarkable what a good voicing can do. Congrats on a great job!

Awesome!

Felt.

Good.

Heh.

Kudos, Ron!

Just curious, how long ago was that piano voiced before the last voicing job you did for that piano?

I only started tuning for her last year. It was built in 1995, so this may have been the first hammer shaping.

I could tell the hammers had been aggressively needled in the past to try to darken the tone - to the point of damaging the structure of a few of the hammers. There were little divots where the layers of felt were separating.

I really like Petrof grands, but have noticed that they brighten up a lot with playing.

An unexpected compliment can really make a person's day. I'm delighted you received one. It seems that it was well-deserved.

Big Al

quote:

Originally posted by rontuner:
I only started tuning for her last year. It was built in 1995, so this may have been the first hammer shaping.

I could tell the hammers had been aggressively needled in the past to try to darken the tone - to the point of damaging the structure of a few of the hammers. There were little divots where the layers of felt were separating.

I really like Petrof grands, but have noticed that they brighten up a lot with playing.

as a piano tech geek, i am really curious about what changes/techniques you feel made all the difference in the customer's experience of the piano.

voicing is a combination of manipulating the hammers, regulation, and tuning--because all three affect tone (i'm saying this for the peanut gallery here, not you, ron )

so was it badly in need of string leveling? hammer strike? damper regulation? felt sanding on the hammers? needling? or did you play with the stretch characteristics of the tuning? play around with the unisons?

would love to hear how you went about satisfying their ears. and very, very cool!!

I'll have to sit down and write a longer response, but this was essentially focusing on hammer resiliency after shaping... The timer was set at 4 1/2 hrs and then I did whatever I could in that time - including close to 90 minutes for a really nice fine tuning...

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:

quote:

Originally posted by rontuner:
I only started tuning for her last year. It was built in 1995, so this may have been the first hammer shaping.

I could tell the hammers had been aggressively needled in the past to try to darken the tone - to the point of damaging the structure of a few of the hammers. There were little divots where the layers of felt were separating.

I really like Petrof grands, but have noticed that they brighten up a lot with playing.

as a piano tech geek, i am really curious about what changes/techniques you feel made all the difference in the customer's experience of the piano.

voicing is a combination of manipulating the hammers, regulation, and tuning--because all three affect tone (i'm saying this for the peanut gallery here, not you, ron )

so was it badly in need of string leveling? hammer strike? damper regulation? felt sanding on the hammers? needling? or did you play with the stretch characteristics of the tuning? play around with the unisons?

would love to hear how you went about satisfying their ears. and very, very cool!!

In any piano work, there is a law of diminishing returns for the time spent. Picture a steep hill at first that turns into a gentle slope that keeps rising. A lot of change can be made at the beginning with a few hours of work, but then additional improvements end up taking more and more labor.

I've found that I'm really at my best with the first push "up the hill". Others are best with the long process of creating the very best work possible.

Voicing (mostly) has been developed and honed for the concert stage. Many of the techniques I've learned over the years focus on results that last... through the performance! I'd been to numerous classes where concert techs talk of voicing as preparation for each performance.

I tend to focus on techniques that (for me) are quick and tend to last in the home. With that in mind, here was my procedure:

1. Pre-treat hammers by steaming from the top. I use a combination of 70% alcohol and white fabric softener to begin. Dropper onto the top of the hammer and then a small hammer iron across the top. This tends to puff up the surface, including the compacted string grooves. (Then less felt needs to be removed during the next stage)

2. Shape hammers - One teacher in the past told us to follow the layer of felt to find the shape the hammer 'wants'. Not all felt allows for that with more modern high-heat and pressure created hammers. My goal is to almost, but not completely remove the string grooves.

3. Gang-finish the top surface. Using the finer grits with a wider sanding paddle maintains the level of the striking surface to better match the string level. Sanding done with hammers lifted to string level.(usually no work mating hammers to strings)

4. This action was pretty consistent for how close the hammer approached the string with very slow motion, so I didn't need to adjust that. The repetition springs were weak across the middle, so I did need to adjust all of those.

5. Sliding action in and out of the piano multiple times to further use the liquid approach in different (specific) areas of the hammer to alter attack, power and sustain. My goal was to 'tone down', or 'darken' the attack without making it 'dead'. That's sometimes a fine line!

6. I may have used a single needle in a few hammers that still sounded different from neighboring notes. I still wanted a growl possible in the bass graduating to a warmer middle with some sparkle possible in the top octaves.



(Photo Chris Chris Chernobieff - long post on dissecting the tone of piano hammers on pianoworld. He's done a great service bringing together a lot of the past information on chemical voicing.)