Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Installing/Voicing Renner (Blue Point) on NY Steinways

For many years, when rebuilding fine Steinway grands, I have alternated between installing NY built hammers or Renners, after discussing the tonal pros/cons with customers. I have particularly good success with installing the recent Renner Blue Points - a beautiful, round European tone with very little voicing.

I have customers who still prefer I use NY hammers, because, although they thoroughly enjoy the richer, rounder European tone, they want to make sure their NY Steinway continues to have the more crisp, projecting NY tone. One customer said, "The Renner tone is indeed warm and beautiful, but it's so round and perfect that it seems to lack the 'excitement' of the NY tone."

Of course, starting with a new set of NY hammers means building of lots of juice doping to build the tone, and that's a technician's chore I particularly hate doing.

I've heard it said that a specific procedure of needling the Renners can really open them up and bring out a NY-type brilliance from them. Any experience & guidance with this?

Renners will never sound or perform like NY hammers.

Steve

Steve (who already posted) and others know far more than I do about this, but I'll offer a recent observation: my mentor installed a new set of NY hammers on a 15 year old D in a medium sized concert hall - I watched and assisted as the whippens, hammers, and shanks were replaced over the course of a week. After judicious amounts of fitting, mating, traveling, burning, filing, voicing, ironing, regulating (much of this more than once), we only ended up using the minutest amount of "juice", and it was rather diluted and only used in one section of the piano.

The result was a very nice chamber instrument for that hall, and it was done with an absolute minimum of lacquer in the hammers. My mentor mentioned that the new NY hammers are a bit firmer than what was being produced before, and is generally terrified by techs who reach for the "juice" before exhausting other options first.

To properly voice up the NY hammer you must reduce the weight properly. Especially when you reach the octave above middle C. Aggressive tapering and even reducing the width somewhat, dramatically reduces the amount of lacquer needed, and also makes the hammers far more durable.

The old Steinway hammers were quite light, with the mahogany mouldings and the planing the sides to taper from crown to tail.

A few years ago, I installed a set of Renner hammers (sourced from Steinway, NY) on a Hamburg D - I pre needled them before installation and that was the bulk of the needling I did. After the client played them in - They were nice, but not brilliant.

In contrast, I just worked on a Steinway D with NY hammers. They had too much felt and too much lacquer. I took a dremel with a drum sanding bit and reduced the bulk of the felt before filing by hand. I took pure lacquer thinner and filled the hammers 5 times, moving the lacquer further into the hammers and away from the crown. Octave 7 got 4 applications of thinner in the lower segment and 3 applications in the higher segment. The result was better repetition, as the hammers now have more spring to them. The tone in the bass and middle changes more with key pressure, and is easier to control - but best of all, the high treble is brilliant, and requires very little key pressure - a concert pianist's delight.

I installed two sets of NY hammers on B's a year ago - one set had enough lacquer from the factory, too much felt on the hammers, and the bass hammers were cut too wide. The second set had excessive felt as well, but required lacquer. These are still a work in progress.

Like Ed, I think hammer weight reduction on NY hammers leads to better tone and action.

I forgot to mention that part in my observation - my mentor certainly did thin the hammer shanks in the treble and some of the hammer moldings themselves, as another step prior to using lacquer.

Greetings,
The factory hammers are supplied oversize, as their protocol is based on shaping the hammer to the pianos' needs. Only after the shaping should hardener be used. I have encountered numerous rebuilt Steinways that used "all original" parts,which included hammers that were untouched. It is the hallmark of ignorant rebuilders that will put a stock set of hammers on a Steinway and leave them as they were. They are expected to be, and MUST be shaped, both for weight and tone. If one doesn't know what they are doing, they should use some other hammer that is closer to what is needed.
Regards,