Basic Piano Care ~ Where Do I Begin?
From the Piano Technicians Guild:
A Lifetime Of Enjoyment
A piano brings a lifetime of enjoyment to you and your family. As you might expect with any investment of this size, a piano requires periodic servicing to provide outstanding performance year after year. But to understand what maintenance is required, it’s important to understand the nature of the piano.
The beautiful, natural sound of a piano is due to the remarkable blending of such materials as wood, metal, buckskin, and wool. Together they create a uniquely timeless sound that no other instrument in the world can duplicate. While electronic synthesizers may approximate the sound of an acoustic piano, they cannot approach the true beauty of the real thing.
Pianos are peculiar in the sense the more often they are tuned, the longer they stay in tune. And conversely, the less often they’re tuned, the faster they go out of tune. Thus a piano that’s not been tuned for many years will usually not hold the first tuning as long as a piano that has been tuned on a regular basis.
Schedule Your Piano Tuner Regularly
Keep your piano in tune so you can enjoy the full potential of your piano. ( Piano Manufacturers Recomendations ) 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.
Protect Your Piano From Dust
Keep your piano clean. Keep the keyboard covered when not in use to prevent dust from accumulating. Clean keys by occasionally wiping them with a damp cloth and drying them immediately. If accumulated debris cannot be removed with a damp cloth, try wiping the cloth on a bar of mild soap or moisten with dishwasher 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 cannot wipe away.
Piano Action Regulation
Piano action regulation is an often overlooked piano maintenance.
From the Piano Technicians Guild:
… It’s important to note that tuning is only the adjustment of the system of strings and pins that determines the pitch of each string. Your piano also requires a periodic servicing called regulation…
What is piano regulation and how does it affect my piano’s performance?
Regulation is the adjustment of the mechanical aspects of the pianos to compensate for the effects of wear, the compacting and settling of cloth, felt, and buckskin, as well as dimensional changes in wood and wool parts due to changes in humidity…
… The action is the mechanical part of the piano that transfers the motion of the fingers on the keys to the hammers that strike the strings. It is comprised of over 9,000 parts which require adjustment to critical tolerances to be able to respond to a pianist’s every command…
Regulating a Grand Piano
Every note in a grand piano has more than 35 points of adjustment.
Regulating a Vertical Piano
Every note in a vertical piano has over 25 points of adjustment.
Have your piano tuner regulate your piano every two to five years. You will be surprised at how your piano should have responded all these years.