Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum noises, buzzes, clicks, rattles...........

Hey techs- I think it would be beneficial to all of us to list sources of rattles, buzzes, squeaks, etc. It may also help the piano owners who read the Tech Forum to understand how difficult these things can be sometimes to find.

I'll start with two from this past week: A new vertical, metallic buzz when striking C4. Source: loose top lid hinge screws, which were stripped. Added a drop of CA glue to screws, re-inserted, problem solved.

New high quality grand, buzz at B4. Source: leg brace on #3 leg a bit loose.

I'm sure there are hundreds of these. Let's share them; I intend to print them out and carry them with me.

Sam

That's gonna be one big list.


My favorite are the non-piano buzzes, vibrating vents, light fixtures, etc. Then there's the ceiling fan causing a vibrato effect.

I have found when I play that ninety percent of these sympathetic vibrations are present or absent depending on the temperature and humidity. Therefore most of the time they are here today and gone tomorrow. The funniest one wasn't a vibration at all but a nest of birds in the chimney. The birds "answered" phrases within a certain, quite narrow treble range. All I heard was this vague interference during playing and it wasn't until I happened to practise an isolated group that I realised what was happening.

I find sympathetic vibrations are the worst.
You'd swear it was inside the piano, but it turns out to be a crystal glass sitting on the mantle.

I've been known to ask the customer to keep striking the most offending note (typically it's in the bass register), while I walk around the room. They think I'm crazy (not far from the truth), until I put my hand on the object causing the noise... and it stops!
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Or, the paper clip sitting on the soundboard of a baby grand, in a place where you can't quite see it (a magnet on a flexible extension comes in handy for finding those).
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One of the most interesting (and frustrating) noises I ever ran into was with a Thomas organ (you remember those).
The customer complained about a bleeping noise coming from the organ.
I made one house call, spending about a half hour there. I heard the noise, but couldn't for the life of me figure out what caused it.

Then, I happened to stop by again at night.

Their house was on top of a cliff overlooking a harbor in what was then my home town of Nahant (MA).

As I listened carefully, about every 20 seconds I'd hear a "bleep". Well, the sun was going down and it was getting dark. Sure enough, every time I heard the bleep, I also saw a bright flash of light ... from the lighthouse in the harbor.

Turns out the lighthouse also sent out a radio signal at the same time, and it was at just the right frequency to cause a "bleep" in the organ.

I contacted the Coast Guard and found out what frequency the signal transmitted on, and got a filter from a technician to filter out just that frequency. Problem solved.
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And you thought chasing down noises in a piano was challenging :-)

To make a very long list very short, anything loose will buzz or click. Anything that moves can squeak or bind, Any felt that is too hard will click or thump. The fix? Play as loud as you can to mask it all. Sorry Sam, it's been a long day!!

I can't wait to read all these.

Here's my latest buzz on my fairly new (1 year old) M&H A: It was a raspy buzz that occurred when I played bass chords, loudly. It took my tech maybe 15 minutes to localize it, but it turned out to be that one of the screws holding the key return bar (is that the right name for it? the long horizontal bar running across the keys that is visible when the fallboard is removed?) had worked its way loose. He tightened it and went on his merry way. Two days later I started hearing another buzz, this time from the treble side of the keyboard. I remembered that there was another screw on that bar at just about the same place I was hearing the buzz, so I took the fallboard out myself and, sure enough, that screw was way loose, too. I have to say I was tickled pink to have diagnosed and fixed it myself.

Loose hardware inside the lid lock of a grand can be tough to find; I tend to write that off as "non-piano" hardware.

Sometimes upright bass strings buzz against the damper levers in the tenor range, if they're out of adjustment.

--Cy--

Lid lock rattles are legion; I have had luck with a small bit of linseed oil; linseed also works very well with hinge rattles.

Frank, that's a great story about the Lighthouse!

GP

How about the phantom click on key return.... loose key leads!

ya! tell us more about this frequency filter you used

One thing you don't need is an acute hearing problem to add to all this. I hear high frequencies too easily and low frequencies poorly.

Which the latter usually affect me by someone on the phone who speaks quickly- dropping consonates-in low pitched voice with a non-English accent, sounds familiar anyone?

My new Bosendorfer has to be tuned and other matters when it's been played for quite a few hours and settled down from travelling by road.

None the less, the RH seems to have some affect and I have just fitted the Dampp-Chaser system which will be interesting to evaluate.

Alan

Ha, that's funny.
This all happened 30 years ago, I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

I do seem to remember it took weeks to chase down. I remember talking to a number of people at the Coast Guard, explaining my whole story over and over until I found someone who could help.

The store I worked for (Curtis Music Stores, had been around since 1890) had a top notch electronics tech under contract. He's the one who pulled out the schematics and showed me where I needed to wire in the filter.

In those days, even I could read a schematic. Some instruments still used tubes. And transistors, capacitors, resistors, diodes, etc. were all separate components you could actually work on with a soldering iron:-)

The bleeping lighthouse (radio) signal wasn't the only issue. Some of the organs would pick up two way radio conversations, particularly if a police cruiser went by with someone talking on the radio. You'd hear one side of the conversation as clear as if they were in the room, but it was coming out of the organ.

That's an very interesting observation. We all hear things in a different way, even before hearing loss enters the equation. One person's "brilliant" is another's "tinny"; one person's "muddy" is another's "mellow". That's why sometimes a rattle or other annoying sound drives the client up the wall, and either I don't hear it, or it doesn't bother me. Still have to deal with it though. It's also interesting how sometimes I am offended by sounds, notes, tones, that they don't hear at all.

Loose damper underlever leads are a nice source of clicks. MOst of the time, it takes a pretty hard player to knock them loose.

One of my faves is the old front caster on a console lifted slightly of the ground because of unlevel floor. Sounds like the piano is falling apart. Even worse is the same effect from the middle or rear casters when there are six on the piano.

Another good one is my brain rattling after a five tunings-w/pitch raise day.

ceiling fans not only cause the vibrato effect, but those little screws that hold on the blades come loose with time producing........rattles.

Older type of metronome on the piano has caused some buzzing once in a while. Other things here have been what has been placed on top of the upright, like at Christmas time. Since I have lived with this piano for ages, I know if I hear a buzz to go after what ever is new around it or in the room!

I posted a thread recently about a ticking noise I heard when I play my MH AA grand. Sometimes it's caused just by my walking around the room. It was really annoying. Several people offered suggestions, and one of them turned out to be right: it was the piano rocking back and forth on its legs. The tops of the legs are not perfectly flat, and the surfaces underneath the case which they press against aren't flat, either. So the piano can actually rock back and forth, clicking happily as it does so. The gaps turned out to be as large as 0.012". An amusing hour spent on my back with a feeler guage, brass shim stock and tin snips has pretty much sloved the problem.

great post, Paul, thanks for repeating it. I will add it to my list. That had to be tough to diagnose.