Home / Featured / Piano Blog / What to do? worn out hammers…
Pianos are built to last a long time… but like a car, parts get worn out and then no longer perform as they should. If a piano is well-loved (and well used), the hammers will wear down from repetitively striking the strings. Over the years the strings will gouge out grooves in the hammers. The increased surface area of the strike point changes the “voice” of the piano, and it also puts greater stress on the strings, increasing the probability of breakage.
But! there are solutions. Before shelling out at least $1000 for a new set of hammers, you can get almost the same result for a lot less by having the hammers reshaped by a piano technician. Aside from shaping the hammers to a smooth, even shape, the technician will then match each hammer to the strings it strikes, to get a pure, even tone. This is a picture of some hammers I reshaped recently for a client. It was amazing what a difference it made to the tone of his grand old upright, giving it many more years of life.
August 20th, 2010 at 9:45 am
love this site – it’s a great blog – may i suggest you get an rss feed.