As some of you might know, over the past year and a half I’ve been working my way through a piano tuning and repair course. Strings players must be able to tune their own instruments, and many players have picked up bits and pieces of “set up” knowledge, like how to roughly place a bridge if it gets knocked out of place and how to properly replace strings. However, it’s a highly unique skill among pianists to be able to tune, fix, and improve the functionality of their own instruments.

There is a stereotype in the piano world that performers must practice 10+ hours a day and therefore have virtually no time for anything else outside of music. On the flip side, many luthiers I’ve met seem to feel the same way about their work - it isn’t a hobby, it’s a time and labor intensive skill that must be honed. And so, this strange phenomenon arises, where fine players who devote themselves to making their instruments sound good have very little to no understanding of the inner workings of a piano. They depend on piano technicians - who often have no playing experience, believe it or not - to keep their instruments in shape.

The best analogy I can come up with is cars, keeping in mind that I know next to nothing about them: everyone drives them, but unless a little idiot light pops up, or our car starts dinging at us incessantly, or we hear a terrible grinding noise, we drive blissfully unaware of any problems. Most of us don’t know how to perform any car maintenance on our own, not even an oil change or topping up fluids. And usually, we don’t know how to communicate with our mechanics, which then leads to suspicions that we’re being ripped off when we get a really high quote for work we didn’t even know needed to be done. We can’t see what they’re talking about. We don’t know how it affects the performance of our car. We just took it in because its inspection was due!

Well, pianos don’t have idiot lights. Most of us can hear when a piano is really out of tune, and that’s when we call a tuner/technician. Most everybody can tell if keys are sticking; there are over 50 things that can cause that, by the way. It might take awhile to discover other not so obvious issues.

A silver lining to teaching my studio online is that it has given me a window into my students’ practice environments. Without this, I probably never would have discovered what kind of pianos they are playing, and what condition they are in. I feel extremely lucky to be able to provide them with technical assistance and guide them through instrument care as part of their instruction.

Yesterday, I went for a routine piano tuning. This client is a student and was out of the house for a bit, which created the perfect time for me to swing by and check out the instrument while still maintaining proper social distancing.

I had tuned this piano, a Baldwin spinet, previously. Over the course of our online lessons, and as the seasons shifted, I could tell that it was in need of a biannual tuning. But I was hearing something else over our WhatsApp lessons. There was a “clacking” with each key. I asked my student if she had noticed that sound, and she had. I asked if anything else was bothering her, so she also pointed out that her damper pedal was squeaking. These are things that you can and definitely should mention to your tuner when you call them, even if they don’t ask! With those two symptoms in mind, I set to work investigating the problem.

I took the top of the piano and a few other pieces off so that I had full access to the keys. The first thing I am doing is checking to make sure everything is visually tic-tac-toe.

I’ve made two edits on this picture to point out some things. The first one is a green box. Those pieces are called backchecks. To put it very simply, when you depress the front of the key, the back of the key comes up, which sets off a domino-like chain reaction and causes the hammer to strike the strings. (Magically, the dominos reset themselves every time you fully release a key.) The backchecks should be square with the catchers, the pieces they bump into. You can see in this picture that they are unevenly spaced. Is this the end of the world? No. Will it have some effect on the overall playability of the piano? Yes. This adjustment is on the easier side, but can be fiddly.

The second edit is a red circle. All 88 of those parts are plastic finger nuts. You can twist them tighter or looser to play with the amount of motion in a key before the other parts start to move. Of equal importance, underneath them is something called a rubber grommet. It’s all attached to a sticker or lifter wire - a longish wire rod that attaches the back of the key to the backcheck.

Spinet pianos were first introduced in 1935 and were extremely popular throughout the 60s and 70s. Production of the spinet piano stopped in the 90s. They are relics from a time when the piano industry was trying to make more affordable, space saving instruments to market to the average family. Now we have digital pianos, which are lighter, the same size or smaller, and never need to be tuned. Most of the spinets I run in to today are from the 60s and 70s. Several parts are rubber and plastic - another way to lower production costs - which wear out much faster.

After 50 or more years of use, the rubber material that the grommets consist of wears out. They provide cushioning between the plastic finger nut and the metal keyfork, the piece at the very back of the key that attaches it to the sticker. I have read about technicians showing their clients the grommets as they crumble apart. I didn’t encounter that with this piano, but because there is not that much lost motion, I don’t see what else this noise could be caused by. More convincing is the fact that this doesn’t happen on just one or two keys, but on nearly all of them.

A quick search shows me that a set of 100 rubber donut grommets costs $17.95 - not bad! However, the process of replacing them is time consuming, which increases labor costs. Remember, there are 88 of them to fit in a single piano….

As I continued my inspection, I noticed some dust both on top of and underneath the keys.

I had never really given this much thought before starting my piano technician course. No tuner that had ever visited my house had mentioned this in over 25 years of piano ownership. We have always had at least one, sometimes two, cats and a dog in this house. This client’s house is pet-free! Bits of paper or coins can easily slide between the keys, which can interrupt playability. The dust buildup does make the piano feel a little sluggish, though it happens so gradually that it’s hard to notice. Pro tip: to keep dust, hair, and foreign objects out of the key bed, keep the fallboard - the protective wooden piece that covers the keys - closed when not in use.

Removing all of the keys also allowed me to see the felt and paper shims underneath - no damage!

I happened to check the felt on the hammers. There are many, many layers of felt wrapped around each hammer which are under a lot of tension. Over time, the felt becomes hardened or deeply grooved. This can be fixed by shaving off layers and reshaping them, and will improve the tone quality. To my surprise, this is what I found instead:

As you can see, the glue has failed and the felt is coming off of the hammers. This can happen when the piano lives in an environment that is too dry. The first two hammers in the bass section are fine, but every other hammer from there all the way down the piano has this issue to some extent. There is a fix! But I’m not sure it’s worth it. The felt would have to be glued and clamped until it is dry, but it has already lost a considerable amount of tension which will not be restored. Without the proper tension on the hammer felt, it sounds “fuddy.”

The ideal option is to replace all of the failed hammers. At $7.50 per hammer, and 29 hammers needing to be replaced, it adds up. On top of that are labor costs. Is the piano worth it? Sadly, probably not. Similar reconditioned pianos are listed on eBay for about $600. To put a positive spin on it though, my student is now far beyond the capabilities of this instrument, and it has allowed her to develop her playing skills for the past 6 years!

All that you just read falls under the category of regulation, which is adjusting all of the parts of a piano so that they move uniformly and efficiently. A piano should be well regulated before tuning commences.

Often, people call a technician for tuning, not knowing what to communicate, or unaware of any internal problems. I encourage you talk to your technician about these things the next time they’re out! Just like a car, the longer you let some things go, the worse they can get, leading to other major repairs. As a teacher, if your piano feels good to play and is pleasing to the ears, I guarantee that there will be more practice at home.