My experience: Shoe shine method of removing string grooves on the hammer is quick and goes a long way to improve tone, and will last longer than needling. You dont necessarily need to do a 3 hour complete hammer reshaping. Just remove the grooves (even if the hammer shape isn't optimal), spend 20-30 mins and the tone will drastically improve even without needling. At that point you can still needle to get even better results, that will last even longer now.
I totally agree that doing a surfacing to the hammers is best prior to doing any needling. That being said, I have seen so many quick shoe shine jobs from other techs that have left the hammers with a weird oblong shape that then creates a weird shallow tone - So yes agreed - love the shoe shine hammer surfacing as long as the integrity of the hammer shape is kept=)
Sure! The sound is thin, unfocused, and lacking of any real color.. When the hammer is improperly shaped to a kinda oblong shape it seems to loose the color and tone - Sorry if that description isn’t as helpful or precise
Excellent video . PTA course covered some of this - now waiting to see the Grand voicing without removing the action . What methods do you use to go the other way, to brighten the sound and how do you lacquer the hammers ?
Yes! The PTA course is great! We will definitely do a training on brightening the hammers in the future. It's not as typical to need this but it does come up.
My experience: Shoe shine method of removing string grooves on the hammer is quick and goes a long way to improve tone, and will last longer than needling. You dont necessarily need to do a 3 hour complete hammer reshaping. Just remove the grooves (even if the hammer shape isn't optimal), spend 20-30 mins and the tone will drastically improve even without needling.
At that point you can still needle to get even better results, that will last even longer now.
I totally agree that doing a surfacing to the hammers is best prior to doing any needling. That being said, I have seen so many quick shoe shine jobs from other techs that have left the hammers with a weird oblong shape that then creates a weird shallow tone - So yes agreed - love the shoe shine hammer surfacing as long as the integrity of the hammer shape is kept=)
@TheArtisanSchool Interesting. Can you describe the shallow tone?
Sure! The sound is thin, unfocused, and lacking of any real color.. When the hammer is improperly shaped to a kinda oblong shape it seems to loose the color and tone - Sorry if that description isn’t as helpful or precise
Thanks!
Excellent video . PTA course covered some of this - now waiting to see the Grand voicing without removing the action . What methods do you use to go the other way, to brighten the sound and how do you lacquer the hammers ?
Yes! The PTA course is great! We will definitely do a training on brightening the hammers in the future. It's not as typical to need this but it does come up.