The secret weapon for making good tunings sound great
We bought one of these voicing tools from Jim Coleman Jr. many years ago, and it's provided amazing results ever since. We're pleased to announce that Jim is making them again, and the Sugar Coater voicing tool is back!
With an array of fine, shallow needles, this tool is actually used on the top/striking section of the hammer - the area we carefully avoid when working with traditional voicing tools. Five minutes with this tool can sometimes transform a nasty-sounding piano into something that will make your customers very happy.
We also added a safety cover made of flexible polyurethane. It slips over the end of the tool, protecting the needles when not in use.
How to use:
Preferably with the hammer tails supported with a block, push the needles into the felt, repositioning the tool from front to back (or back to front) to cover the strike area where the string cuts are visible (11:00 to 1:00). The number of stitches will increase gradually as you move from the smaller treble to the larger bass hammers that have more felt surface area to cover in this region of the hammer. A good starting point might be 2 or 3 stitches in the high treble, increasing to 5 or 6 in the tenor section, and maybe 7 or 8 in the low bass, Experiment to get the results you want.
Some pianos will respond more readily than others. Occasionally, you may get too much of a tonal change, or the notes in octaves 4-6 might be too subdued. If this happens, it's easy to reverse the effect and bring the tone back up: Simply hold your voicing block, or a piece of wood, over the hammers and play each key a few times with hard blows to cause the hammers to hit the block.