Beyond Tuning: Other Maintenance Your Piano Needs
Beyond regular tuning, there are several other adjustments that should be performed regularly or semi-regularly on any fine piano. Here’s a brief list, ask your tuner for more detailed information about the care of your specific instrument:
Action Regulation:
A good grand piano has approximately 9,000 parts, most of them moving parts!
When you strike any piano key, you send between 15-20 parts into motion, just to make sure the hammer strikes the string properly, falls away properly, and the key goes down smoothly and to the right depth under your finger. All these parts are adjusted to exact measurements and specifications to insure that every note strikes correctly, and that the touch of every key feels precisely like every other key up and down the piano.
After many hours of play and practice, these settings start to go out of adjustment, little by little. Depending on how much you play, after several years, the settings will need to be rest across the whole piano action. This process is called “action regulation.” It is a precise skill, to be performed only by a well-experienced techinician. He will need several hours to do the work, and will charge approx. $250-$350
Voicing or Tone Regulating:
The srings are struck by egg shaped felts called the hammers. The tonal color and beauty of any piano is extremely dependent on the condition of these felts. If they are too hard, either from being “packed down” after years of hard use, or from old age and drying out, they will produce a very strident, unpleasant sound. If too soft, the piano will sound dull and lifeless. A fine techinician can immediately detect the condition of any piano hammers and their effect on the tone. At some point, so much of the original hammer felt may be worn away that the only remedy is replace them all with a fresh set of quality hammers.
But if there’s still plenty of original felt left, and the hammers have just gotten hard or deeply grooved, a skilled piano technician trained in proper tone regulating will know how to “voice” the hammers back to a beautiful tone. Often this requires shaving off some of the old top layer of felt (a very precise process, as hammer’s striking point must stay properly shaped to strike all the strings at an exact point) and using a needle to soften or release tension on specific areas of each hammer. How often your piano’s hammers need this will be determined by how often and hard you play, and the quality level of the original hammer set. Professionals who practice many hours every day will need some hammer voicing every month or two. “Average” home players, practicing 45-60min. a day may find they can go several years in between hammer vocings. Voicing is not a job for newbies; if your piano needs voicing, get the best tech you can find, period.
Some parts that may need replacing:
Aside from the aforementioned hammers, which may need replacing in anywhere from 10-35 years depending on playing frequency, another felt component that commonly needs replacing are the key bushings. Each key has two holes that straddle two guide pins as they go up and down. The pins are metal and the key is wood, so there wood be constant knocking if not for 4 little pieces of felt separating and cushioning the metal pins from the wood. These are called the key bushings. The constant up & down motion of each key rubs against the metal pins, eventually wearing away the felt, causing the keys to fell very loose and noisy. When this occurs (somewhere between 5-25 years, depending on quality of the piano and playing frequency) a good technician will rebush your keys for about $250.
0 comments
Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment