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Is there a link where I can hear how unlacquered New York Steinway hammers sound like? Thanks.

They are hard to find. The Steinway parts are lacquered at the factory, unless the tech specifically asks for untreated ones.

Victor,

In addition to what Ed Foote said, the hammers are traditionally pretty inconsistent from one to the next, even within the same set of hammers. They really require hammer work before trying to demonstrate a piano. Some of this normal hammer work will include using lacquer or some other reinforcement material.

If you find a set of untreated NYC Steinway hammers on a piano, you are not likely to like the performance.

Just curious, why are you looking for this?

The long standing tone-regulation tradition at Steinway has been. "The voicer puts the tone in the hammer with the shape" to quote the late great Fred Drasche in 1972. Un-lacquered, un-shaped New York new hammers will have a very progressively more so dead, wooly, soft tone starting around note #50 to #88.

If you taper the sides of the hammers with a sander more, (if you have a small electronic gram scale, weigh them before and while shaping to keep the weight evenly graduating), remove the compression wires if there are any, and use a knife to remove felt from the shoulders thus putting more of a pear shape on them; you will find they open up wonderfully and lacquer will only be needed from the high #60s to #88.

Greetings,
Fred is also the one that told us (Nashville PTG chapter, 1990) to leave the wires alone if a hammer is not mated to them, but, rather, use the edge of the sanding stick to cut a groove in the hammer under the lower wires. Fred also said that the only voicing technique needed on Steinway hammers was a needle straight down through the strike point into the center of the hammer.

Neither of these approaches will leave a piano in more than mediocre condition. So, I would suggest that there is a lot more, better information and techniques today than what we should be dragging out of fossilized memory.
Regards,

Ed, But Fred is correct about the one I mentioned and they were the first words out of his mouth at the first Steinway tone regulation class I attended so very long ago.

I totally believe that Fred said this. I know Fred by reputation and I know Steve Drasche, who is still in the industry.

While I do not disagree with this statement Ed, the original question is about unreinforced hammers. My company installs between 30 and 60 sets of NYC Steinway hammers each year and it is a very rare set that does not need this help. Frankly, I would not want our Steinway pianos judged without the use of reinforcement.

My 2 cents,

I agree that the shape of the hammer is a large factor in the "tone" of the piano. However, all the shaping in the world will not correct a lacquered rock or a marshmallow ball of felt, both of which I have seen come out of the factory.

I remember Laury Cody (sp?) speaking to us in 1976. He was doing a lot of the Steinway factory tuning and voicing in Boston. He described the pear shape of the Steinway hammer, (which I have to say has been a very variable quality in the last 20 years of production I have seen), as allowing a softer bit of felt at the strike point than what was underneath. His point was that with a hammer of the proper density, such as was seen on the pre 1945 instruments, the shaping left a hammer with a soft surface for mellow pianissimo playing, but with a firm foundation that would "bring in the bells" when the force was increased. This was also why new pianos were in need of playing-in to develop the full tone of a Steinway.
Maybe it is the modern expectation that the piano should sound perfect when brand new that caused the hammers to be so lacquered up to begin with. Maybe the buying public doesn't want to go through the breaking in process, but here at the school, I managed to convince the faculty to play their new M's and L's for a semester before I voiced them up, (the complaints were initially that the pianos were dead). Within a semester or two, those complaints disappeared and I was able to keep the voicing reasonable under industrial use. Now, 10 years later, I have just been told that the pianos just keep getting better and better. I don't think this would have happened if I had doped them to brilliance when they were new. I would have been sticking needles in sugar cubes for the last 5 years.
We recently purchased a used D, (1996 model from a private owner). The hammers were so hard that the dealer passed on it, saying it didn't sound like a Steinway! It was so brassy that only two members of the faculty would play it, the rest ran for cover. I have been trying to voice it down, but it won't stay down! The hammers have a strata under them that makes me think of geology class. According to the customer, it was bright to start with, and kept getting better!
I think the optimum tonal palette is arrived at by a hammer that is too soft to begin with, and is played enough to form a very slight hardening at the surface. I am wary of pianos that are brilliant at mf on the showroom floor.
Regards,

Very interesting read, Ed Foote... you too, Ed McMorrow, and you too, Rich.

Thanks to all the piano professionals who participate in the Piano World forums... whenever you speak, we listen.

Rick

If the best result for Steinway hammers now or in the past has to be achieved at least partially by a lot of playing in, I think that should be done at the factory. No one should have to buy a piano, especially an expensive one, hoping it will sound better at some time in the future.

Greetings,
Most musical instruments of which I am aware improve with use. (I don't know how this could apply to brass instruments, but I am told it is so). No voicing stays the same under continuous play. If the piano's voicing is perfect on the show room floor, it can only be downhill from there.

This may be a question of how much maintenance a customer wants to buy. If paying for weekly voicing is acceptable, that's one thing, but hammers continually change with use, and allowing brilliance to develop with some use allows a nice voice to be had for longer periods of time. There is a cycle from mellow to brassy that hammers traverse. It is the nature of felt.

The narrower the range of tone that a customer wants, the more maintenance will be required.

Most "home" customers I have worked for ( as distinct from the recording studios or stages), understand that freshly voiced will be somewhat softer than ideal, and they call when notes are too brilliant. Different customers have different spans of time between the two extremes.
A Steinway piano that is "perfect" on the showroom floor will need to be voiced after say, 50 hours of play to keep it there. A hammer that is slightly softer than ideal will, in that 50 hours, come up to "perfect", and remain there longer than the one that was juiced. At least, that is how it has worked around here.
Regards,

Lots of things that work in Nashville do not work up here in Yankee territory.

(Sorry for the OT musical humor - other than that last statement, I agree with your post)

Yours,

I'm aghast! - I would have thought that Rich would be a Red Sox fan.

I weep.

double post

Any piano needs to be "played in." It usually takes a year or two to fully mature. Some things can't be rushed by a machine. That is only a beginning and a quality control check.

Initial voicing is also the beginning, not the end of the journey.

I think most or at least many customers would like to have the best idea of how a piano sounds at its best before purchasing it. Perhaps those very familiar with a particular make would be more amenable to buying a piano that would be closer to perfection after x hours playing in.

Why not just play the Steinway in(not juice it if one thinks that's bad)as long as in needed to reach "perfection" at the factory or dealer? If 50 more hours is typically needed why not do that at the factory?

The question remains:


It's something I'd like to hear too.

The factory does have a playing-in machine (in a somewhat soundproof room, thank goodness!) that does a lot of pounding, after which the piano is given another go-over with voicing and regulation.

This idea of letting a piano naturally build up its tone has some merit, but if the NY hammer doesn't have enough lacquer, you could play that thing for 10 years and still not be able to develop a strong fortissimo.

I have found one of the advantages of the NY approach is that the voicing seems to be quite stable. Needling has a much more focused effect giving more control over una-chorda voicing.

For the same reason that they don't regulate their pianos before shipping them out, there aren't enough techs up there to do it. There is a rough regulation, but compared to what I consider performance level, it is, maybe, 50 %. The pinning changes so fast after assembly, that it is a waste of time to do a fine regulation. Steinway used to offer a regulation at the 6 month mark,(at least here,where Street's piano was in business) but now, it seems that is left up to the owners to keep up with.
There is no way to completely voice one of those pianos before the strings are mated to the hammers, and the stringing is so green when they are shipped that the string level is a moot point.
It all depends on the dealer's willingness to pay their tech to finish these pianos. I have seen some dealerships where the pianos were beautifully prepped, and I have seen some that sell them just like they get them.
Regards,

Whether it's techs to voice them or (what I was talking about)more machines to play them for an additional amount of time, it seems to be only a question of them being willing to spend the money. The way I think of it is that if their particular kind of hammers require more work to make them sound their best then it should be done before the piano is made available for sale.