Recently I was tuning a piano in Canal Fulton, Ohio when I noticed that several keys sounded really bad. Even after tuning them, it sounded horrible. I immediately inspected the hammers.
Piano hammers are pieces of wood covered with felt that hit the piano strings when the keys are pressed.
It turned out that several of the hammers in the bass section of this piano were hitting not only their own string, but also the string of the key next to it. For example, when the piano player hit the C, they would hear both C and C sharp at the same time.
Fortunately, I’ve encountered this problem before and knew exactly how to fix it. The piano hammers are attached to the action frame by a little screw. If that screw becomes loose, the hammer can shift or wobble when the piano is played. In this case several screws had come loose and half a dozen hammers had shifted and were hitting multiple strings.
I went through the piano, aligning the hammers and tightening the screws. Once I was finished and the tuning was done, the piano sounded 100 times better than it had before.
Remember, maintenance on a piano can be just as important as tuning it. That’s why it’s good to have your piano tuned once a year.
Gary Howell is a piano tuner in the Akron, Canton, Massillon area. He has more than 12 years of experience as a piano technician. He can perform both tuning and repair on all makes and models of pianos. Go here to read more about Gary. If you need your piano tuned, contact Gary Howell by clicking Here.
Photo credit: flickr Creative Commons, Strings for Upright by David Lenker
