RE the initial post from Daniel Achten: Too much missing information. However, we understand that RE action regulation
"it can handle a more refined regulation and anticipate it handling a more consistent voicing."
A more refined regulation is vague, but suggests that the regulation is not a disaster. On the other hand, maybe it is too rough since Daniel also claimed the regulation to be sloppy.
Daniel also writes: My main concern is that my customer is also complaining about the volume and strident tone...can Renner Blues be voiced well for this environment and for my customers desires.
My answer is, absolutely yes, but it is going to take some hard work by someone who knows exactly how to proceed. This assumes that the first technician did not, for some reason, juice the hammers. Voicing for hardwood floors, bare walls and big open spaces is always an issue, for any hammer and piano. Missing information includes hammer travel, flange pinning, and now everything seems suspect. Still, focusing on the hammers and tone only I know how I would proceed. This brief sketch is just that -- brief.
Renner hammer voicing as we teach it at the Renner Academy follows a definite set of procedures.
At the Academy, work begins by solidly gang-clamping the entire set of hammers in rigid hammer clamps (tails down sitting on a stiff rail). Then, standing and leaning over the clamped sets allows for the best, least stressful and most forceful use of a three-needle voicing tool. A significant amount of pre-voicing per deep needling in lower and mid-upper shoulders is applied. This is done until the tool can be inserted relatively easily, but with some definite sense of resistance, which indicates that the hammer has not been over-needled (hard to do, really).
Deep needling is followed by sanding with 320 grit sandpaper strips, pulling up small tufts to the top, and then lightly shoe shining the tops. Everything looks nice and pretty, and resilience has been introduced into the hammer set. This can be sensed by squeezing the hammer sides between thumb and fingers.
Hammers are then bored, cut to length, coved and side tapered (lower molding only) and hung on the shanks. Final voicing is accomplished at the piano, most of which pertains to attack and evenness. So my rhetorical question to Daniel is (and I don't require a reply): was this work done? Comment: if at present, you cannot insert a three-needle tool to at least an 8 mm depth (10 is better) with some force but relative ease in the upper shoulders, then I am raising an eyebrow.
If currently the hammers are too stiff, then any voicing technician is working at a disadvantage, as a significant amount of deep needling is required with the hammers on the shanks.
Still, were it me, I would want to put out the biggest fire first, which seems to be the "loud and strident" and uneven tone. Here is the big, club you over the head clue from Daniel,
My main concern is that my customer is complaining about the volume and strident tone.
Note the words, main concern. At this point, gaining the customer's confidence is job one.
If the regulation is close, this work can wait until setting an acceptable voicing baseline. I know this is backwards, so please, not to be rude, save the chapter and verse for another time. This is triage time, so we must assign the degrees of urgency. I've been there a bunch, so I know what works in calming down upset customers, many of whom are reluctant or loath to possibly "throw good money after bad". With experience and common sense, attending first to the worst pains will clear all heads and start moving things in the right direction.
In my experience the dramatic change in tone made on day one will instill a much needed confidence and hope in the client, such that on day two (and probably day three is necessary) all refinement efforts to string work, tuning, hammer travel, burn in, regulation and hammer fitting followed by the final voicing tweak will seem warranted and accepted. There is no point in making sure that the front door swings and latches perfectly if the house is on fire.
The brief high-points of the work using traditional needling techniques. I have used felt softeners in the past, but only on hammers that absolutely would not respond to needles.
- Align hammers to strings (if not too far off should take only a few minutes).
- Check your fussy alter ego in the closet and quickly set a hammer line to blow distance that allows for some aftertouch. Set a quick letoff and drop. Ignore spring tension, jack to knuckle interface and checking (take a half hour).
- Don't take any time filing or cleaning up the hammers. Save for later.
- Lift and "level" strings (30 minutes max, correct the worst out of level).
- Tune the piano. Time on the job is now ~2 1/2 to three hours. Spend the rest of the day with your voicing needles.
- Play the notes firmly but not forte.
- Call in the customer and have him point out the worst and best of the tones, but guide him to those notes you think are the worst, and those not so bad. Don't argue.
- Isolate and mark the worst loud and strident offenders.
- Take a loud offender and deep needle the lower shoulders (just above the equator at 3 and 9 o'clock).
- Try radial insertion, but if too difficult, then insert more or less parallel to the molding (this will require insertion entries higher on the low shoulders than radial methods).
- This stitching will probably not make a noticeable change, but if density exists there, it needs doing.
- Try radial needling in the center of the upper shoulders as a test. Full insertion of the needles may not be possible. Test a single needle 10 mm long. If difficult or impossible to insert, the hammers are too stiff indicating that serious pre-voicing or final voicing has not been done.
- Time to deeply insert needles in the upper shoulders, moving upward on the hammer in small increments on front and back shoulders. Stop about 6 mm from the crown.
- If it is difficult to insert needles going up the shoulders, turn the voicing tool 90 degrees such that the three needles are parallel to the sides of the hammer rather than perpendicular to it (learned this technique when I worked at Kawai). This will make deep vertical insertion much easier (see photo of Renner Blue Point).
- Test the hammer. The tone should be improved, though not finalized.
- On stubborn hammers, I have taken the deep vertical insertion technique all the way to about 1 or 3 mm from the crown, finishing with 4 mm deep sugar coating, or else angular cross stitching per single needling into the core under the crown.
- This is why in such instances I save hammer fitting to the strings for last.
- With the tone noticeably improved, you have "broken the code" for bulk work with hammer tail supports on the bench (bring one with, or else an action cart, or use the piano lid with a moving blanket). The "code" may be different for the various sections, i.e. the first capo section may require less work, or maybe the same --- depends.
- With your client watching, take another offender and repeat what was done on your trial hammer. He will be impressed with how much work is involved.