We just purchased Kawai K2 and found some problems when using the practice pedal. When the practice pedal is used alone, few keys are out of tune and there are weird echo sounds accompanying it. Also, when both practice and sustain pedals are used simultaneously, most keys seem to be out of tune.

We have contacted the dealer and the tuner referred to us told us that when both practice and sustain pedals are used at the same time, it is common for keys to be out of tune and hence, it is "normal."

Is this true? I played Kawai growing up and used both practice and sustain pedals often and have never encountered this problem.

Thank you.

The practice pedal drops the moderator felt between the hammer and the strings. In effect, the moderator felt makes the hammer wider, often enough to hit a string of an adjacent note. That is what makes the out of tune effect. You can hear it more when the damper pedal is depressed, since then that adjacent note is not damped.

What I've done when this is a problem is to snip the practice mute into individual fingers of felt. This must be done carefully! I push the hammers up to the strings with the mute on and mark the edges of the hammer with a pencil so I know exactly where to cut. It works great.

I would have suggested that, but this is a new piano, and I hesitate to recommend modifying it.

Adjusting the muffler rail for how much felt hangs below the hammers is also a simple way to minimize the felt slapping sound.

In some cases a little judicious realignment of the rail itself also helps, as if the felt hangs very close to the strings it will "slap" against the neighboring notes less.