Piano Technician's Helpful Hints & Tips Blog
Piano Cleaning
How often should I have my piano tuned?
How often should I have my piano cleaned?
How often should I have my piano regulated?
How often should I have my piano voiced?
What is piano tuning?
Why do other piano tuners take so long to tune my piano?
What is voicing?
What is Regulating/Regulation?


Piano Cleaning

Ugh, dust, it’s everywhere, and in everything, you can’t escape it. Over years this dust settles into your furniture, hiding in every crease and crevice and you try to keep it away with dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning, but have you forgotten the hidden areas of your piano?

With thousands of moving parts a piano’s delicate yet durable mechanisms can be affected by these decades of dust causing premature wear & tear as well as squeaks & slowness due to friction. This friction can prematurely deteriorate the piano causing damage to these thousands of delicate mechanisms.

Regardless of how well you clean and keep the dust contained it always finds a way inside the piano. Have you ever have your piano professionally cleaned? And how old is your piano? Did you know that there is likely a manufacturer decal hidden under the layers of dust under the strings of your grand piano?

A recent article at time.com discusses the potential dangers of these floating and settled particles.

Remove this particulate matter from every part of your piano to ensure a lifetime of reliable piano performance. It won’t make your mistakes sound any better, but it might give you peace of mind knowing those mistakes won’t cover you in a cloud of dust.

How often should I have my piano tuned?
  • Most customers are able to tune their piano just once per year and hear a substantial difference. Many manufacturers recommend between two and five tunings per year. Some things that may affect the stability of the piano tuning: Significant changes in moisture or temperature, very heavy playing as indicated by the volume of your playing, deterioration due to age, poor technique during the tuning process, new or unseasoned strings.

  • If you live in an area with substantial changes in humidity throughout the year, you may need to tune your piano with the season changes, our recommendation is to wait 6-8 weeks after a significant change. Your piano’s reaction to these fluctuations will ultimately determine the frequency by which you tune your piano.

How often should I have my piano cleaned?
How often should I have my piano regulated?
  • Regulating your piano will correct abnormal mechanical behavior allowing the piano to be perfectly playable and feel the best the piano can feel throughout it’s decades long life.

How often should I have my piano voiced?
  • Voicing a piano can be done at anytime to correct overly bright or dull sounding instruments. This process is often only performed on Concert and/or teacher instruments, but can make your piano much more pleasant to experience, both for you as a player or as a listener. As you play the piano you are compressing the felt hammer hitting the steel strings causing them to deform and become hard and brassy sounding. Our 1-3 day process will correct the shape of your hammers, make the hammer hit each string at the same time and soften or harden the hammer as required by the customer’s needs.

What is piano tuning?
  • Piano tuning is the process of altering the pitch of each individual string in your piano to achieve a melodic harmonious instrument regardless of where you play on the keyboard. With 200+ strings and over 6 tons of pressure a piano is constantly trying to find a way to relieve this pressure. Due to the very rigid construction of the piano frame and harp, the only release from this pressure is for the strings to stretch. We able to expertly correct this often in less than two hours.

Why do other piano tuners take so long to tune my piano?
  • We tune aurally (by ear) alone. Using a tuning fork we are able to quickly and accurately tune your piano. The fewer mistakes that are made tuning your piano makes the process much quicker and more accurate than other methods we have seen. Remember these simple rules:
    • The more out of tune your piano, the less likely it is to stay in tune.
    • The more a string is moved, the less likely the string will stay where the piano tuner sets it.
  • Ultimately if you are happy with the results you are getting it doesn't matter how long it takes to tune a piano

What is voicing?
  • Voicing is the process of regulating the tone or timbre of the instrument. If your piano has become bright, brassy, tinny, strident, or any other adjective denoting an overly harsh sounding instrument, your piano may benefit with a voicing.

What is Regulating/Regulation?
  • Regulation is the process of adjusting the delicate mechanisms in your piano back to factory settings. As you play your piano the materials in the mechanical parts begin to compress and wear causing them to become misaligned. By adjust these mechanisms you piano will feel better to the touch and allow for a longer life.

If you have questions that have not been answered please Contact Us.