Routine Maintenance for Studio Pianos

As an owner of a studio piano (a vertical piano 44 - 48" in height) you have the privilege of playing an instrument that is capable of providing top quality performance and sound while occupying no more of your valuable floor space than a spinet or a console. With proper maintenance, a high qual- ity studio piano will be a delight to play, providing a responsive touch and a rich tone, particularly in the bass (where many shorter vertical pianos tend to be weak in nature).

The following information is intended to enable you to better understand the proper maintenance required to keep your studio piano in top form.

Tuning

With any acoustic piano, following a regular tuning schedule is essential for the piano to perform up to its potential. All pianos go out of tune over time because of a variety of factors such as seasonal swings in humidity levels. An important key to your piano sounding its best is to keep it in proper tune by having it professionally serviced on a regular basis. An adequate tuning schedule for a high quality studio piano being used on a regular basis is a twice-a-year tuning, usually scheduled for the same two months of each year. For the piano that is being played frequently, a quarterly tuning would be better yet. For a piano currently not being played but which is being maintained for future use, an annual or bi-annual tuning will usually suffice. Letting a piano go for longer than two years without tuning, however, is not recommended.

Regulation and voicing: For your studio piano to perform at its peak, the first step is to perform any needed repairs to the action, then get it on a regular tuning schedule. When this has been done, the tone and touch of the piano should be evaluated to ascertain if there is a need for regulation and / or voicing, particularly if a number of years have gone by since those needs have been met. Regulation refers to the procedure of adjusting all the moving parts of the piano action so that the mechanism is performing in peak form with no wasted motion. Voicing refers to evening out and improving the tonal quality of the piano by making careful adjustments to the hammers of the piano. When a studio piano is well regulated, the mechanism for each note performs its task with accuracy and maximum efficiency. A number of precision adjustments need to be made from time to time if this optimum level of performance is to be maintained. In the photo to the right, one such adjustment is being made to eliminate "lost motion" in the action.

Pianos go "out of regulation" over time because of the fact that for every important adjustment which is made there is a corresponding felt cushion which buffers the contact points between the parts of the action. These felt cushions become compacted with age and use, and the various regulating adjustments made in the factory need to be redone in order to compensate.

"Voicing" is the process of evening out the tone of the piano from top to bottom so that each note blends in with the rest. Notes which seem out
of place in the scale (too brassy in sound, for example) need to be adjusted.

Environment

While tuning, repairs, regulation and voicing are the job of the technician, seeing to it that your studio piano is placed in an appropriate spot
within your home is up to you. What is needed, as much as possible, is a location where temperature and humidity are kept at moderate levels year-round. Drafty locations, or areas where wide swings in either temperature or humidity occur (for example, unheated porches, moldy basements, etc.) are unsuitable for any piano. In particular, avoid placing your piano in front of either of the following:

1. Hot air registers - dry, heated air blowing directly on the back of a piano is particularly bad for the soundboard.

2. Drafty windows.

Note: Effective humidity control equipment, either for the studio in general or the piano in particular, will aid in keeping your piano in top form.

In Conclusion

To keep your studio piano performing at its best so that everyone who sits down will enjoy their musical experience, it makes sense to come up with a plan for maintaining the piano which fits both your budget and expectations. If you would like, I would be happy to schedule a time that we could sit down together and come up with a plan for a regular maintenance schedule for tuning and regulation.