Every piano has a unique sound quality, a voice. Much of the difference is due to design, but even pianos of the same make and model will sound different. The procedure of modifying a piano’s tone quality is called “voicing”. 

Sometimes a piano will sound very metallic, with clanging tone quality. Sometimes the sound is muffled and dull. Often there will be certain notes that exhibit these qualities more than their neighbors. Voicing evens out the tone and can make the sound brighter or darker to a certain degree. 

Bright, metallic tone is often caused by hard hammers. You can look at the hammers on your piano. Where the hammer strikes the strings you will see grooves. These grooves are where the felt has compressed and has become more dense. If these grooves are not too deep, the hammers can be reshaped by sanding,

The overall tone quality of a piano can sometimes be made brighter by chemically hardening the hammers.

Subtle changes of voicing and getting notes to match is achieved by “needling” the hammers. This entails delicately changing the felt fibers using a sharp needle.

Thuddy sounding notes in the bass are most often caused by dead strings. Sometimes giving the strings a twist can sometimes improve the tone.

Whatever is done to a hammer is usually not very reversible. So, before even touching the hammers,  the strings need to be well seated, level, and in-tune and the piano should be well regulated.

For certain pianos, the only remedy for deteriorating tone is to completely re-string the piano, replace all of the hammers, or even rebuild the action. These are expensive propositions and are usually applied only to pianos of reasonable value.

The short story is that you can change the tone quality of your piano (within reason). People who like the way their piano sounds tend to play more often. I can only assume that they are finding their experience more enjoyable.

Please ask me about how voicing or regulation might help you love your piano more. Call or send a message. For a more detailed assessment, let’s schedule a tuning and we can look at your piano in detail. Voicing and Regulation are included in our Full Service appointments.

Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of the “King of Instruments”.

It might sound a little out tune or like it came out of a honky-tonk. You may have just moved someone else’s dust into your home or something much more unseemly. Maybe a couple of keys are crooked or hard to press. Maybe the foot pedal makes noises. You know the piano market is depressed, you just got a “free” piano. What is it worth to put into this instrument?

Why do stores still sell used pianos? Because they have taken care of all of the problems mentioned above. By taking care of many pianos at a discount they can still make a small profit margin selling a console or spinet for seven or eight hundred dollars.

That is essentially the difference between your “free” piano and a store bought used piano. I will sometimes “flip” pianos because I can do all of the work myself and compete with the store selection.

You have a “free” piano. You really cannot look at resale value except for as mentioned above, selling it as a “cared for and well maintained” piano. You are investing in the instrument for your own benefit, for the pleasure of playing on a well working instrument that makes musical sound. You are investing in your own life and the life of your family, a musical experience, not a marketable object.

Of course you will need to tune the piano, and most likely precede the tuning with a pitch raise, a rough tuning that over stretches the strings so that when they relax, they remain close to the correct pitch. This increases the stability of the tuning and will help it last longer.

Years of dust, and dirt, and foreign objects accumulate under the keys, in the action, and in the cabinet of the piano. Start fresh. A thorough internal cleaning is highly recommended.
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There are approximately 5,000 parts to a piano. Most are never touched or even looked at during its lifetime. Hundreds of screws may have worked themselves loose over the years. While taking out the action to do an internal cleaning, all of the action screws should be tightened and all the parts examined for excessive wear or breakage.

Corrosion is an enemy of all things with an extended lifespan. Corroded parts should be cleaned and lubricated.

There are 6 major adjustments (other than tuning) that can be made for each note. This is called “regulation”. A poorly regulated piano with poorly aligned parts can cause excessive wear and make the instrument feel difficult to play. 

Things to look for:

• Are the keys level across the keyboard?
• Press a key slowly. Does is move freely for quite a bit before it feels like it engages the action?
• Is a key hard to press down or slow to return to normal?
• Do the keys wiggle back and forth a lot?
• Does the sustain pedal work correctly?

There are other things that a technician would look for internally, observing the behavior of the hammers and the dampers.

Over time, the hammer felt becomes compressed and hard. Often you can see grooves in the hammers where they come into contact with the strings. Very deep grooves can even mute the strings’ sound production. Usually hard hammers cause a loud, bright tone with a sharp articulation. The hammers can be reshaped and the felt can be worked with a needle to adjust the tone of the piano. This procedure is called voicing.
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Once done, many of these procedures will not need to be repeated for years, if ever again in the piano’s life time. Think of it like a car that not only missed it’s oil changes, but its 5,000 mile, 12,000 mile, and 25,000 mile maintenance work.

You have a “free” piano. What a great world we live in that we can have free pianos, I suppose. Now the investment is in the experience. I would suggest that it is worth investing in a half day or a day’s work from a professional craftsperson to create years of pleasurable music making experience, as opposed to having an instrument that is a chore to play and ends up just taking up space. Why did you take the piano in the first place?

Talk to your piano technician. They can give you an assessment of the piano’s condition, realistic expectations about what can be achieved with the instrument, and recommendations as to how to prioritize the service and maintenance of your instrument.

Be sure to read the article on how often you should tune your piano. Regular maintenance can extend the life of your pianos and help the piano to stay more in tune longer between tunings.

Most people don’t know. That’s OK. It’s not one of those memorable dates on the calendar.

The thing to remember is that regular tunings can extend the life of your piano and increase its tuning stability.

By spending time with the piano on a regular basis, the technician can find small problems that can be fixed with minor adjustments before excessive wear turns what was merely an adjustment into a much more expensive repair job. There are an estimated 5,000 parts to a piano, many of which wear with use and with exposure to the environment. In addition to over 220 tuning pins, there are 6 major adjustments to the action for each note, thats 528 possible points to go out of alignment. The better the technician knows your instrument, the better they can care for your instrument.

Anyone who has tuned a guitar knows how often a guitar string can go out of tune. They may even be aware of how much humidity and temperature can affect intonation. There is a general impression that pianos, since they are so much bigger and heavier, don’t go out of tune that easily. Unfortunately, that is not quite true. The intonation of a piano is constantly changing. Generally, however, it is more or less homogenous in the way that it changes, everything mostly changes in the same way, making it less noticeable. Over time, these fluctuations leave more and more differences behind, accruing and multiplying until the instrument becomes noticeably out of tune. The bigger the fluctuations, the bigger the differences that are left behind. The smaller the fluctuations, the longer it takes for the smaller differences to accumulate and become noticeable. This is the general idea behind tuning stability. By tuning the piano regularly and keeping the fluctuations small, the more stable the piano becomes over time, keeping it more in tune longer between tunings.

An average piano lifespan is about the same as a human, more or less. Just as regular checkups and care can affect the quality and duration of your life, so can it be said for tunings and piano care for your instrument’s life.

In northeast Ohio, it is highly recommended to do biannual, seasonal tunings. The extreme differences in humidity between the summer and winter season can cause wide variations in intonation.

Schedule regular tunings with your technician, or ask your technician to schedule regular reminders by mail, e-mail, phone, or text.

Good question. The short answer is: “physics”.

The longer answer:

The Greek philosopher Pythagorus discovered the natural intervals created by different string lengths. A 2:1 ratio creates an octave. A 3:2 ratio creates a 5th. A 4:3 ratio creates a 4th, and a 9:8 ration creates a whole step, a major second. The “major 3rds” are dissonant.

If I start on the lowest note on the piano, A and go up in Perfect 5ths, I will end up on A again in the 7th octave, just below high C. I need to add the 3:2 ratio 12 times (3:2)^12 = 129.7463 times the original frequency. If I start on the same A and go up by octave to get to A7, I will have added the ratio 2:1 7 times (2:1)^7 = 128 times the original frequency. They are not the same A. If I start on the low B or low C, I end up with even a completely different set of frequencies or notes. The solution for this is called Tempering, where one note is set to specific frequency, usually A-440, and all of the other notes are made to sound good together regardless of what their theoretical frequency should be. It is common today to use Equal Temperament, where the distance between each successive note is the same, regardless of their theoretical frequency.  -  A guitar tuner uses theoretical frequencies and does not offer a tempered tuning.

There is also something called inharmonicity in the strings themselves. The theoretical overtones of each string are exact ratios: 2:1, 4:1, 8:1, 4:2, 3:2, 6:4, 4:3, etc. Because of the physical properties of the metal wire, as the harmonics get higher, the part of the string that vibrates to make that harmonic gets stiffer, vibrates faster, and the harmonic goes sharper. For example, the harmonic that should match the note two octaves higher is too sharp, and the notes do not sound good together. The solution for this is called stretch. As one gets higher or lower on the keyboard, the octaves are stretched to be just a bit wider than theoretical so that they sound in tune with the rest of the keyboard.  -  A guitar tuner uses theoretical frequencies and does not offer frequencies for stretched octaves.

If a piano is severely flat, it may take two or three passes to get it to pitch and stabilized. This is called a pitch raise. The strings are all tensioned, from lowest to highest a certain percentage just above the target pitch, knowing some of the tension will be immediately lost and the pitch will immediately go flat. Some tuners do a half-way pass with old and rusty strings.  -  A guitar tuner is no help for pianos that need a pitch raise, which many “inherited” pianos do.

On a neglected piano, a solid tuning would take anywhere from an hour and a half to over two and a half hours for a professional. With more than 220 strings and tuning pins, a do-it-yourselfer may be making a commitment of anywhere from a half of a day to maybe 2 days or more.

I have met several people who have tried the DIY method of piano tuning who were happy to commiserate about their learning experience. One gentleman watched the Youtube videos, bought a tuning kit from Amazon, and after breaking two bass strings, decided it was time to call a professional before he did any more damage.

If you are adventurous, give it a shot. For the most part though, this is one best left to a professional.
Support your local craftsperson.