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I had an "interesting" day yesterday!

My first appointment was at a Korean Church - they have two pianos, one being a Korean grand that I have been picking away at for several years. When I arrived the piano was up to pitch and the unisons were pretty good. There were a couple of regulation issues that I decided to focus on: The damper lift with the pedal was somewhat uneven, and the checking was low. The voicing was also getting a little harsh.

Since the piano had a capstan adjustment for damper to pedal lift, it was pretty easy to even things up. While I was in there I noticed one of the spoons was quite a bit off from its neighbor - I checked it when I put the piano in and sure enough, that damper was lifting significantly earlier in the key stroke than its neighbor. Just lining up the spoon with its neighbor fixed it.

The checking issue was being exacerbated by the "back check destroying" hammer tails that are not uncommon on these types of grands. The aggressive grooves in the tails are prematurely wearing out the backcheck leather. I took some pictures of the backchecks to show the church. Hopefully they will fit replacement into their budget in the next couple of years. I quickly ran some 80 grit sandpaper over the tails just to smooth them out a bit and remove some of the glazing. I then went through and reset the back checks.

I generally have good success setting the backcheck as close as possible and then test it by depressing the key while pushing down on the hammer with my other hand. This flexes the shank a bit and simulates a ff blow to the key. I do this just to make sure the tail won't catch on a hard blow. It always pays to do a couple of samples with the action on your lap and then with it back in the piano, as sometimes things change.

After the backchecks were set, I checked the rep springs. Most were OK but a few were too jumpy.

When I test drove the piano I noticed a couple of subtle clicks on a couple of notes in the midrange. It turned out the pinning was a bit loose, so I repinned those two hammer flanges.

The hammer shape was still OK from previous reshaping efforts, so I just did some quick and judicious needling to bring it down some. I always like to follow needing with "pounding in". I put a cloth on the strings and mute/immobilize them with one hand while giving each key a fff blow with my other hand. Then I go back over it again with an in-between the string voicing tool (my favorite is from Pianoforte Supply - its like a machinists pencil) and make sure things are even note-to-note.

I was about an hour and 20 minutes in when I got a call from my secretary (AKA my wife!) who asked me where I was. Then with a shock I had the awful realization that I was at the wrong Korean Church! There was another one literally 2 miles up the same road with very similar pianos. I had switched them in my mind!

Luckily the other church was very nice about me missing the appointment - and we offered to tune one of their other pianos free of charge to make up for the inconvenience of the pastor having waited for me.

The other church accidentally received a free service. Question: Does accidental charity still count??

Sometimes it is easy to get in over your head in appointments!

Yesterday I had a new client with an Acrosonic that had a very sluggish action. I pulled one of the worst hammer flanges (no easy task with the action in) and treated it with some Protek and vigorously exercised it for 10-15 seconds. It helped but not enough.

Since the family lives way out in the countryside, I decided I'd try to dive in and see what I could get done. It's always a bit of a tough decision to pull a spinet action at an appointment. However this was an action with a pickup rail, so its a little quicker.

I like to pull the 2 dampers ad the bass/tenor break and use them as clamps on the pickup fingers to keep the rail and the fingers from coming apart. It works like a charm, with the added bonus that you wont have to worry about ripping off those dampers when pulling the action.

With the action out, I took it outside and blew out a substantial amount of dust. Then at the dining room table, I treated all the flanges with Protek. I then put the action back in, but didn't secure it in place yet with the screws and bolts. I just wanted to see if the flanges were free. There were about 7 that still did not want to return reliable, so I marked them with chalk, pulled it out again, and repinned those parts. By the time I got the action back in and working I was at my 2 hour point, but in general, I'm OK going going to 2.5 hours. I wanted to at least run through a quick and dirty tuning.

A frequent technique I use when tuning a piano that is flat, is to quickly pull one string of each plain wire unison up a little over twice as sharp as the note is flat. It is not done with any real precision. To do a whole section takes under a minute. The goal is that when I'm bringing two strings of a unison up to pitch, I'll be bringing one down a little more. It can go a long way towards counteracting drift.

So for speed tuning, I'll pretension quickly using the above method. Through in a temperament strip in the middle and just ballpark the temperament and octaves in the midrange. Then I pull the strip and install it "every other one" so that I can pull in the second string of the unison without having to move any mutes around. I pull in the third string by shifting the strip over using the same "every other" method.

The bass I tune without mutes. I listen to the sound of the octave, and then pull one string of a bichord up to beat a little faster than how the octave sounded and then pull the other up to match. It's basically an exaggerated "shimming" technique. I do the same thing in the treble using a single mute: listen to the octave. Mimic the beating in the unison and then pull the second string up to match. The third string (if I estimated correctly) should be more sharp than the other strings were flat, and I bring it down.

By the time I played the piano a little and made out the invoice it was close to 3 hours. Luckily my last appointment was flexible and didn't mind me running late. The owner of the Acrosonic was super happy, and gave me a tip. He had seen all the work I had done, and not only appreciated the amount of work he witnessed, but his appreciation for piano technology was greatly improved!

I tuned for a church with a Yamaha C5 that I have been servicing for almost 10 years. It has a partial DC system (50 + 38 watts of dehumidification and humididstat) and they keep the piano covered when not in use.

The tuning was solid. I started with my usual routine of pulling the action and getting out my fast vac and blowing everything out. I checked the DC system.

When I played the piano, the most noticeable issue was a click in the sustain pedal. The next biggest issue was just that the voicing was getting strident, especially in the bass section.

The pedal click was coming from the pedal box. Since I wouldn't have to do much tuning I went ahead and used that time and removed the lyre, and the bottom of the pedal box. The click was coming from the pedal pins having too much free play in the plastic dowels that support them. By hammering on the dowels I was able to close the pin holes enough to make them snug on the pins again. Reassembled the lyre and the problem was solved.

I finished by spending about 30 minutes go over the voicing. The bass took a couple of passes with a 3 needle Japanese voicing tool. Here's a picture of the one I use:



It's a great tool! I use German needles that I get from Pianotek. They seem to be the strongest I have used so far. The tiny hex key stores inside the handle under a screw on cap. I drilled anther hole in that area under the cap to store extra needles so I always have some right with the tool.

Is it recommended to keep the piano covered when not in use?