Basics for Care and Maintenance of a Piano

Your piano is an investment, just like your home, or car, or fine furniture. It will always need maintenance and care similar to any other solid property. A piano, with the good care, will only increase in value as it ages.

Basic Piano Care Tips

According to experts, hot, dry air can damage the mechanisms and components of your piano. To avoid this, place your piano away from heat ducts, radiators, or windows. If the piano has a wood grain outside the case, keep it from the window to avoid discoloration. Clean the wood finish with a soft cloth slightly dampened with furniture polish. Keep the interior regularly dusted and free from any toys, coins, and other foreign objects. Try playing it simply to inspect if the strings, dampers, and soundboard are in good condition.

Piano Tuning

Pianos require tuning after months or years of regular use. Piano technicians make minute adjustments to the piano strings’ tensions to properly align the intervals between their tones. Fine piano tuning requires a comprehensive interaction among notes, requiring slightly different pitches for various kinds of pianos. Independent piano technicians, rebuilders, and hobbyists need professional training and certification to tune upright or grand pianos. You can ask relatives or friends to refer trusted piano technicians to you.

Rebuilding and Restoration

Though pianos age gradually, you need to take it to a professional rebuilder to check its condition. By the time a piano reaches the thirty-year mark, its hammers are harder to be voiced properly. Steinway piano restoration experts deal with the three main parts of a piano when reconditioning, rebuilding, or remanufacturing the case, the action, and the cabinet. Rebuilding and restoration services include restringing, soundboard shimming or replacement, bridge recapping, as well as a replacement for hammers, hammer shanks, and pin blocks.

Regulation

The piano action is the mechanical component that consists of around 10,000 parts. This action is made of keys and a system of moving parts that translates the movement of the keys into movement of hammers, which in turn strike the strings and produce sounds. As the action wears, other components also deteriorate, reducing the quality of your piano’s sound. You can contact professionals that regulate the piano’s components to fix this problem.

Climate Control Systems

Considering that most pianos are made of wood, they are vulnerable to the humidity or atmosphere around them. Advanced climate control systems regulate internal humidity levels, the ideal relative humidity of forty to fifty percent despite external conditions.

Voicing is another area of adjusting and regulating your piano that requires being done from time to time. Voicing a piano has to do with its density or hardness of the hammer against the felt. A brighter tonal quality is caused by hardening the felt and softening the felt produces a softer, muted tone. Voicing a piano needs it be in perfect regulation and tune beforehand. A reputed piano technician can handle these tasks for you.

Keep reading: “Interesting Facts About The Piano That You May Not Know”>>

Read on: “Why more adults are taking piano lessons in NYC”>>

For more questions, contact us at info@willanacademy.com or 646-838-3990. Willan Academy of Music offers violin lessons, guitar lessons, and more in NYC, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.