I purchased a Petrof (Weinbach 192) 6’4” Grand Piano in March of 2009. Although the piano was in virtually perfect condition, the hammers were in pretty bad shape. The original hammers (as advertised by Petrof) were Abel Hammers. The piano was manufactured in 2002 and was seven years of age at the time of my purchase. Two different piano technicians attempted to get the hammers to produce an acceptable tone. They needled them, steamed them, shaped them but could only produce short-lived tonal improvement. Nothing they did actually lasted for any length of time. When considering replacement hammers I spent a lot of time investigating hammers, eventually deciding to go with the Ari Isaac Cadenza “S” hammers produced by Mr. Isaac. Prior to doing so though I discussed at length with Mr. Isaac the idea of replacing my hammers. His approach was very professional and helpful. He never attempted to pressure the sale; he only sought to answer my questions. He explained his rather sophisticated approach to producing hammers and what drove him to begin doing so - which was his unwillingness to accept the kind of mediocre tonal quality that many well know hammer manufactures produce for otherwise “high-end” pianos. I was fortunate to be able to hear “before and after” recordings of a Mason & Hamlin Grand Piano that had Abel Hammers replaced by the Isaac Cadenza “S” Hammers. The tonal difference was noteworthy and cinched the deal in my mind. I sent my shanks (with the old Abel Hammers) to Ari and he replaced them with his Cadenza “S” hammers. They were back to me within two weeks and I installed them that day. What a difference. The improvement was incredible. Prior to installing the hammers I had significant doubt that I could ever get the piano to a point where I would be happy. Today I am enjoying the piano every day. The hammers were quality right out of the box. Mr. Isaac continues to monitor my story and I provide regular updates to him. He is a wealth of knowledge and has a genuine interest in ensuring the customer is satisfied. As you can imagine, I strongly recommend Mr. Isaac’s hammers. I am blessed (or cursed) with a critical ear. The tonal response that my piano offers now meets my expectations now because of the hammers Mr. Isaac produced. Jack Dever New Jersey Dear Mr. Isaac I wanted to let you know how happy and impressed I am with your Cadenza "S" hammers. I had a set of very popular European hammers on my 7ft grand piano since it was rebuilt a few years ago. I was never happy with the tone, and the hammers quickly became hard sounding, with no bloom in the tone, even after a professional voicing. After installing your hammers, the transformation was immediately noticeable. The tone was simply beautiful, a full, round sound, with no harshness, and this was with no voicing! Your hammers have continued to improve on their own. Thank you so much for your great work! John Del Carlo Bass Baritone opera singer The Metropolitan Opera New York The Houston Opera The San Francisco Opera. Hi Ari, If you remembered, I bought a set of hammers from you for quite sometime now, and I like to say that I am very very pleased with the rich and silky tone your hammers produce. The depth and fullness of tone is so evident. I am enjoying every minute of it. The tone is still on the mellow side but has firmed up a little and its getting nicer as the weeks go by. Many visitors had come by and they were amazed at the tone, needless to say the bass was just amazingly deep, felt like my piano added some few extra inches :) Thanks Victor Kam - Malaysia Hello Mr Isaac The customer was shocked at the improvement in the tone to his Young Chang! It was funny to watch, ... really. He played it for some moments before he stopped and said, "This is how I wanted it to sound when I bought it." He liked the whole range. The treble was fine - defined and subtle on light playing, and quite bright on hard attack. I m giving him a few weeks to play the piano before I do any voicing, but he says he likes it just the way it is. I thought the work on the hammers was superb. They were the right length. The boring was very accurate, and the weight was so close to the originals that there was very little adjustment need on the repetition springs. Back-check, let-off and drop were very close. Great job! Thanks for a great job. David Jenson RPT I strongly recommend the Isaac piano hammer. I have used Ari s hammers in all my rebuilding projects since 1985. I love the range of color--from the sweetest softs to the fullest louds--with all the gradations in between. My customer s all agree! I also strongly recommend the Isaac bass strings. They provide a rich fullness of the fundamentals with a pleasing mix of higher partials. I appreciate Ari s willingness to strive for improvement in his scales, always trying to get the breaks just right, and the power smooth throughout. R. Barrett Piano Rebuilder Ithaca, New York Isaac bass strings are consistently better than any strings I ve been able to get from any other source. They have a good balance of overtones and can be made to growl if you want them to. In addition, they fit the pianos better than any other strings because every set is made from a paper pattern taken straight from the piano in question. These strings have the ability to speak out into a large hall in ways that other strings simply don t do. They consistently make my rebuilt pianos sound larger than I and my customers expected them to. When I use Isaac bass strings and hammers in conjunction with my new physically crowned sound boards, the vibrancy of the tone is phenomenal. The pianos seem to come literally to life. The sound is just like a living presence in the room. Cadenza hammers are another milestone in the history of piano making. These hammers are more stable than any other hammer I ve worked with. They come to me right out of the box with the exact correct tonal spectrum needed for expressive piano performances. If I need a brighter tone to meet the needs of a particular piano, Cadenza hammers are a dream to work with when hardening them. No matter what you use to harden these hammers or how much of it you use, they retain that same tonal spectrum just at a brighter level. You still get a warmer subtle sound at pianissimo playing that grows in intensity and increases in its high overtone excitation as you increase to fortissimo. When I do get the needle out it is simply for the purpose of touching up and evening out a few hammers or for adjusting a specific tonal character that is desired at one or more of the dynamic playing levels. David Rodgers Rodgers Piano Rebuilding North East, PA Dear Ari, As you know, the soundboard design we use in the pianos we remanufacture require a somewhat more resilient, or elastic, hammer than is commonly used today. We have found the hammers you make for us to be an excellent match for our pianos. They require only a minimum of voicing--just a bit of shoulder needling here and there, and, sometimes, a bit of hardening in the very high treble. About as good as can be expected, I think. These hammers consistently give our pianos the "voice" we are looking for with an excellent dynamic range. They develop a nice, warm pianissimo, yet they still give a good, solid and powerful fortissimo. All in all, a good hammer. We also appreciate the care with which you wrap bass strings to our specifications without attempting to redesign them yourself. We have taken great care to design the stringing scales we specify for the pianos we remanufacture and their performance depends on strings wrapped accurately to these scales. Beyond that, much of our work is experimental and developmental in nature and we depend on getting strings wrapped precisely as we have specified. Your strings consistently have exactly the core and wrap sizes and diameters we have requested. Your prompt and courteous service is greatly appreciated. Regards, Delwin D Fandrich Larry E Graddy Hello, Ari, I m back from the long Fourth-of-July weekend helping my friend install your hammers in his six-foot Young Chang. The extreme bass, and the high soprano upward, are going to need some combination of breaking in and maybe hardening to deliver a good sound. But that much is unremarkable. And my friend is a fair amateur technician who will lovingly and competently attend to that business, I m quite sure. Also of minor import, but appropriate to mention, is that, as best we could ascertain it, your boring job tended toward slightly greater than 90 degrees, causing us to resort to reaming, etc., to ease them to 90 or maybe 89 degrees. What is remarkable is the overall effect of your hammers in that instrument. The old hammers were of the hard, crusty sort that one expects to find on any Asian piano, but these had had a lot of attention to reform them. I remember applying a hammer softening solution (mainly water and acetone, of course), and my friend had resorted to a steaming technique I described to him. And over the years, my friend had needled the heck out of them. I remember that piano having an inoffensive, utilitarian tone. Does one dare expect better from a middle-sized Young Chang? In contemplating your hammers in that Korean piano, I was prepared for the possibility that a great incompatibility would emerge (while figuring that, in the worst-case scenario, we could recover the "classic" Young Chang sound just by lacquering them to death). But I always thought your hammers would work well in an Asian piano, and had empirically expected what I thought would be about a 50% tonal improvement. What we ended up struck me as maybe a 200% tonal improvement. That Young Chang, for the first time, revealed a soul. It became the temptress in the apartment, seducing us pianists again and again to come and explore. In short, it was the most dramatic improvement in piano tone I have ever witnessed. Ari, I do rate you a friend, but I hope it has always been apparent to you that personal loyalty has nothing to do with my reliance on your hammers. And you re always changing your ideas, and getting excited about new twists, etc., etc., which I have always greeted with scientific skepticism. It almost rubs me wrong to gush, but you have again shown that your hammers are absolutely, positively, and uniquely, the best available. Again, I ll say that I do not understand why you don t have a stranglehold on the high end of the rebuilding business, and why you have not engendered serious competition. And I don t understand why so many piano manufacturers, and so many technicians, rely on those hard, crusty hammers, including whatever Renner has been putting out of late. I m finally ready to adopt the statement of another customer of yours from several years ago, to the effect that a good piano starts with a set of Isaac hammers. I can t imagine any other hammers I have ever worked with producing such a dramatic result in that Young Chang. I don t think my tastes the least bit eccentric, nor do I suppose that it takes some great sophistication to appreciate the tonal difference between good and not-so-good hammers. Still, it seems as if having your hammers in my arsenal has been the secret weapon that allowed me to get results from a piano that no competitor of mine could approach. A technician using hard, mass-produced hammers no doubt enjoys the convenience of having a more symmetrical and uniform product in his hands to work with, and of having a fairly brilliant tone at the start. But such a technician who ends his inquiry there is selling himself, and his customers, short. And any who has had a fair exposure to your product yet continues to run to the familiar Japanese or German sources for hammers is a damned fool. Again, I am uncomfortable gushing. But I strongly believe in giving credit where credit is due, and there is no way for me to do so in this instance without gushing aplenty. Your hammers worked a near miracle in that Young Chang! My friend, a poor, freelance musician, spent about his last dollar acquiring the parts and covering my expenses for the weekend, and he now feels richly rewarded. If you ever decide to retire, please give me sufficient warning that I can buy several sets of unbored hammers for my archives. Good health to you, my friend! Steve Manley
A. Isaac Pianos is North York-based company (Ontario, Canada) with a phone number 4162212417. Our data show that the company is located at the address: 306 Betty Ann Dr. The company has a web site: www.isaacpiano.com.
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