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Ani lo medeberet ivrit. That's all I remember from my attempt to learn Modern Hebrew. I used to have clever little stickers on my keyboard to type the Hebrew letters, but Windows made it tricky to switch to right-to-left reliably.

I hope to persist with learning piano longer than I did with Hebrew. It's similar, though. Practice, practice, practice. And occasional shouting.

S&S D, NY vs. Hamburg. Agree they are converging but they are still different. I do think they are the same design but they are built differently. They now both use the same plate. My Hamburg has a sightly different plate that used to be used in Hamburgs. As stated the hammers are different but I do not see that as a design difference. They now both use Alaskan sitka for the sound board. Hamburg has not adapted the accelerated action that NY has. Hamburg tunes to A 442 while NY tunes to A-440. (I have it from a reliable source that Horowitz had his NY D tuned sharp) The NY D has a compression crowned board while the Hamburg has ribbed crown. I believe the wood used in NY rims is somewhat different. (not sure about this one) The wood is seasoned (cured) differently. Thereby the caution in having a Hamburg in North America. The finished case style is slightly different. The NY one looks more modern to me. I hear Hamburg will be using the NY pedal box. Probably since they are produced in NY with computer milling machines (no mistakes). This would not make a difference to the sound of course. There may be other differences I am unaware of.

Mr. N I am still curious as to how you have a new model D and you're not happy. Didn't you play the piano before you bought it?

Don't forget the sostenuto...

This article might shed some light on the subject:

http://www.pianobuyer.com/PDFarchive/2011_SteinwayFitAndFinish.pdf

Hello Mr. Cohen, that link you gave just above was very informative, it went far in answering some questions that I had about the current best practices of hammer prep at Steinway. Thank you.

The impression however is that if you buy replacement hammers at Steinway according to best practices, they must be purchased for the exact model you have, and that because most rebuild shops and owners don't have pounding machines to break in these new/improved low-lacquer hammers, it will take a long time of playing to manually pound in the hammer wool to get good sound. Is that your impression?

Regards -

LJC, nice to see you posting. Great memories of playing your Hamburg D!

There was a thread that was closed that might explain it better. In the opening statement, Mr. N stated "I flew to the factory about 9 months ago and picked the best one out of 5."

Although closed, the thread is still available to view.

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...ding%20a%20Steinway%20H.html#Post2095668

What does that say about the other four …

Wow, I'm being a real noodge today.

I went to STS factory tour with the local dealer about a year ago, and I remember seeing a big pile of cut Maple wood pieces for the rims. The guide said they were about to ship them to Hamburg...

Personally I have never heard of Hamburgs having their Renner hammers replaced with New York hammers.

It's always seems going the other way around.
In fact we've done few in past ourselves - by owners request.

They later were VERY happy with results.

Not saying it couldn't have gone the other way either...

Norbert

Breaking in a similar type of hammer Steinway New York uses. These are made by Ronsen and have a softer pliable felt then what most other companies use. Every piano we rebuild no matter what hammer is used, get this "pounding" for 30 hours. We also go this on our Walter grands in our prep sequence.

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4-xGK2tQyaY[/video]

The last 3 rebuild shops I've visited all had "pounding in" machines, fwiw.
It took a couple of years of playing for the "wooly" model A in my office to start developing a nice range of tone colors, though I intentionally bought one that wasn't too loud due to space limitations and knowing it was going to get played 20 hours a week during the school year.

Techs that I speak to that work on new Steinways seem to like their current production hammers an awful lot.

Ed- Whats' different about the sostenuto?

Roberta - Nice to hear from you too! Thanks for the answer. If Mr. N thought his piano good enough to buy but now does not like it I suspect his problem is room acoustics.

Re hammers - I have heard that S&S NY changed their hammers in some way. I heard this through my tech whose friend is a prominent concert artist and teacher and was asked by S&S to try the new hammer. He evidently liked it very much. After I heard this I asked a salesman about it at Steinway Hall but he knew nothing about it. I recently changed the hammers on my S&S and was quite surprised by the improvement in sound, but then as my tech says, I was driving on bald tires.

It's interesting how much difference 'identical' hammers by same manufacturer can do.

Apparently Hamburg tries a number of sets of several for each single piano. They run of course only few hammers in the different sections of piano - not entire sets.

The hammers are exclusive made and supplied by Renner [ thinking used to be Abel..]

While playing in by machines or hand is fine, there obviously is a 'suitability' to be detected right from beginning.

What also counts is what happens later: hammers need to be shoulder sanded for evenness and voiced to piano's ideal tone
by someone competent.

Several companies I know do similar things, alas can be dangerous.

Dr. Laul ended up marrying one of the music students who was hired to play pianos in - at factory....

Norbert

The last Hamburg piano I saw had the sostenuto rod mounted on the belly rail.

I wasn't aware of that change but I think its a great idea.

It should be noted that the process of playing in hammers is not the same as aging hammers. Most materials, including felt, will change due to oxidation, and that takes time.