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keep your
piano alive
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Keep your piano in tune. It
was specifically designed to be tuned to
the international pitch standard of
A-440 cycles per second. Your piano will
sound its best and give you and your
family the most pleasure when it is
tuned regularly and kept in proper
playing condition.
Keep your piano clean. Keep the keyboard covered when not in use to
prevent dust from accumulating (although
ivory keys need some exposure to light
to prevent yellowing). Clean keys by
occasionally wiping them with a damp
cloth and drying them immediately. If
accumulated debris can't be removed with
a damp cloth, try wiping the cloth on a
bar of mild soap or moisten with
dishwashing detergent before wiping. Do
not use chemicals or solvents to clean
piano keys. Call a qualified piano
technician to remove anything from the
keys you can't wipe away.
To maintain the piano's
finish, you may wipe the case with a
damp cotton cloth to remove
fingerprints, or polish with a reliable
emulsion-type, water-based solution
following the manufacturer's
instructions. Avoid aerosol spray
polishes that contain silicone. Your
technician may suggest a specific brand
name.
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I got a phone call the other day
from a nice-sounding woman who
wanted me to tune her piano.
"Oh, and by the way, one of the
wires on A below Middle C is
broken." We chatted a bit
more about how long since it had
been tuned, then she told me
that she had tried to tune it
herself. "It looks so easy, why
should I pay someone to come and
tune it?" I asked her if
that was how the A string came
to be broken. "Yes," came the
sheepish reply.
Well, I got to the piano, opened the top, then removed the front for
easier access to the tuning
pins. The customer was surprised
that the front came off! Then I
put my felt mute strip in, which
mutes the outside two strings of
each note's tri-chord unisons.
She observed me doing this and
wondered why I had to do it, so
I explained that each treble
note has three strings, but I
can only tune one at a time, so
the other two must be blocked
from sounding.
Then I started tuning it. Yikes! Fortunately, she had only "tuned"
about one octave, in the middle
of the piano. Some strings
within the tri-chord unisons
("unison" means "one sound" or
"tuned exactly the same") were a
full octave flat of the adjacent
unison string. I suspect that
the broken A string came about
when she tried to tune it an
octave sharp of where it is
supposed to be!!
Long story short, she still wound up paying me to tune the piano, and she
additionally had to pay me to
replace the broken string.
There IS a reason you pay "Big Bucks" for a trained technician to
maintain your piano. It is NOT
as easy as we make it look
(that's the thing about being a
professional... we make it look
easy!!) and if YOU break
something, how will you fix it?
There are things that handy
DIY'ers CAN fix on a piano. I
have a few very
mechanically-inclined customers
who have successfully
implemented minor repairs. I
have also seen some real
butchery jobs done by untrained
and unknowledgeable hands, but
this DIY tuning was a first for
me. I hope it's the last. I've
seen a few YouTube videos
demonstrating how to tune a
piano, and believe me, it takes
a LOT more time, effort,
patience, and training to learn
to tune a piano!!
So just call me! I will gladly come tune your piano at your home,
business, school, or church.
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