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Joined: Mar 2020
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Do you have any experiences with Chinese (Aliexpress, eBay etc.) purchased piano hammers, with so called "japanese felt" or "german felt"? I have 90 year old german upright, with really worn hammers, and my goal is to improve the sound with minimum (but reasonable) spend (to last maximum a year, and than sell and to buy something much better and newer). Many of the hammers have too little felt for reshaping, and - as I read few times - such old hammers will go very quickly to their current state after reshaping smirk

Yes, I know what is connected with hammer replacement, angles, glues and etc, no worries, just asking about hammerheads itself.

Cheapest ABEL cost over two times more, I know it's good to buy ABEL, but I want to spend as little as possible.

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If you have never replaced hammers on a piano, any meaningful advice given here will be of severely limited utility. But I will attempt to impart some very succinctly worded information about piano hammers.

Piano hammers are best thought of as "exciting dampers".

The mass of the hammers and how this affects the inertial properties of the action are so critical to tone, action response, stability of tone quality with use, and durability in general.

The density of the felt and how it varies across the compass as well are critical.

The hammers must strike all three strings at the exact same time so the unison strings are in phase.


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I too have noted Chinese hammer sets on sale at reasonable prices, and have wondered about their qualities. Does anyone have experience with them (apart from in new Chinese pianos, of course)?

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On my 1945 upright I have tried two methods on worn hammers - both work.
I am neither a piano tuner nor an expert pianist : however I do have years of experience in mechanical engineering and one years university physics. ! !
Preparation: shape the hammers to remove grooves and, restore the correct oval shape, this may be impossible on the final teble hammers.!
Then either :-
I. Buy 14mm wide Kevlar tape ( widest hammers are 12mm ), take tape and pull it round the hammer holding it ON THE WOOD under the hammer: cut the tape leaving sufficient to "super glue" it TO THE WOOD !. Glue your length of Kevlar first to the underside and wait about 2mins for glue to set, then wearing "rubber" gloves pull the other end of the tape round over the felt and glue it TO THE WOOD.- as the tape is streched you will have to hold it down for about one min!
2.Buy a "chamious(sp) leather cloth" and cut strips about 14mm wide and do the same as in No1 above. Chamy leather is very strechy and thus you will have to make a judgement on just how tight to pull it

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