| August,
2005
Hello, Ari,
I'm back from the long
Fourth-of-July weekend helping my friend install your hammers in
his six-foot Young Chang. The extreme bass, and the high
soprano upward, are going to need some combination of breaking
in and maybe hardening to deliver a good sound. But that
much is unremarkable. And my friend is a fair amateur
technician, who will lovingly and competently attend to that
business, I'm quite sure.
Also of minor import, but
appropriate to mention, is that, as best we could ascertain it,
your boring job tended toward slightly greater than 90 degrees,
causing us to resort to reaming, etc., to ease them to 90 or
maybe 89 degrees. What is remarkable is the overall effect of
your hammers in that instrument. The old hammers were of the
hard, crusty sort that one expects to find on any Asian piano,
but these had had a lot of attention to reform them. I remember
applying a hammer softening solution (mainly water and acetone,
of course), and my friend had resorted to a steaming technique I
described to him. And over the years, my friend had needled the
heck out of them. I remember that piano having an inoffensive,
utilitarian tone.
Does one dare expect better
from a middle-sized Young Chang? In contemplating your hammers
in that Korean piano, I was prepared for the possibility that a
great incompatibility would emerge (while figuring that, in the
worst-case scenario, we could recover the "classic"
Young Chang sound just by lacquering them to death). But I
always thought your hammers would work well in an Asian piano,
and had empirically expected what I thought would be about a 50%
tonal improvement.
What we ended up struck me as
maybe a 200% tonal improvement. That Young Chang, for the first
time, revealed a soul. It became the temptress in the apartment,
seducing us pianists again and again to come and explore. In
short, it was the most dramatic improvement in piano tone I have
ever witnessed. Ari, I do rate you a friend, but I hope it has
always been apparent to you that personal loyalty has nothing to
do with my reliance on your hammers. And you're always changing
your ideas, and getting excited about new twists, etc., etc.,
which I have always greeted with scientific skepticism. It
almost rubs me wrong to gush, but you have again shown that your
hammers are absolutely, positively, and uniquely, the best
available.
Again, I'll say that I do not
understand why you don't have a stranglehold on the high end of
the rebuilding business, and why you have not engendered serious
competition. And I don't understand why so many piano
manufacturers, and so many technicians, rely on those hard,
crusty hammers, including whatever Renner has been putting out
of late.
I'm finally ready to adopt the
statement of another customer of yours from several years ago,
to the effect that a good piano starts with a set of Isaac
hammers. I can't imagine any other hammers I have ever worked
with producing such a dramatic result in that Young Chang. I
don't think my tastes the least bit eccentric, nor do I suppose
that it takes some great sophistication to appreciate the tonal
difference between good and not-so-good hammers.
Still, it seems as if having
your hammers in my arsenal has been the secret weapon that
allowed me to get results from a piano that no competitor of
mine could approach. A technician using hard, mass-produced
hammers no doubt enjoys the convenience of having a more
symmetrical and uniform product in his hands to work with, and
of having a fairly brilliant tone at the start. But such a
technician who ends his inquiry there is selling himself, and
his customers, short.
And any who has had a fair
exposure to your product yet continues to run to the familiar
Japanese or German sources for hammers is a damned fool. Again,
I am uncomfortable gushing. But I strongly believe in giving
credit where credit is due, and there is no way for me to do so
in this instance without gushing aplenty. Your hammers worked a
near miracle in that Young Chang! My friend, a poor, freelance
musician, spent about his last dollar acquiring the parts and
covering my expenses for the weekend, and he now feels richly
rewarded.
If you ever decide to retire,
please give me sufficient warning that I can buy several sets of
unbored hammers for my archives.
Good health to you, my friend!
Steve Manley |
|
January, 2000
Dear Ari,
As you know,
the soundboard design we use in the pianos we remanufacture
require a somewhat more resilient, or elastic, hammer than is
commonly used today. We have found the hammers you make for us
to be an excellent match for our pianos. They require only a
minimum of voicing--just a bit of shoulder needling here and
there, and, sometimes, a bit of hardening in the very high
treble. About as good as can be expected, I think.
These hammers
consistently give our pianos the "voice" we are
looking for with an excellent dynamic range. They develop a
nice, warm pianissimo, yet they still give a good, solid and
powerful fortissimo.
All in all, a
good hammer.
We also
appreciate the care with which you wrap bass strings to our
specifications without attempting to redesign them yourself. We
have taken great care to design the stringing scales we specify
for the pianos we remanufacture and their performance depends on
strings wrapped accurately to these scales. Beyond that, much of
our work is experimental and developmental in nature and we
depend on getting strings wrapped precisely as we have
specified. Your strings consistently have exactly the core and
wrap sizes and diameters we have requested. Your prompt and
courteous service is greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Delwin D
Fandrich
Larry E Graddy |