It's true that posters at PW are often willing to spend other peoples' money a lot more readily than their own. I've almost never seen someone recommend the less expensive of two pianos. The advice is always "it's worth the extra money..."

But doesn't it cost more than a couple of hundred dollars to buy and install a new set of hammers? And, if I remember correctly, the OP said he didn't have the money to hire a tech to voice the hammers. The OP's other piano is at his Grandmother's and it would cost another $200-300 to move it.

Not that I want to make you angier, but as the person who has given instruction you may be the most irresponsible.

My position is quite reasonable, particularly with this OP and his situation.

If things go wrong, do you think he will practice longer when he has to go to his grandmother's to do so? Also a new set of hammers, installed, action adjusted for the new hammers, and the voicing neceaary to optimize them to the piano would likely cost over $500.

And, may I ask the depth and bredth of your experience?

I have received just about all the information I really need, so before any future arguments arise, I would like to ask that this thread be done from more postings.

Doing it to prevent tension now! Thanks for all the info all!

That's good observation, Steve. I usually refrain myself from generalization. But what you said seems to go quite well with what we see.

If one goes to "AutoWorld" forum and ask "I have some basic tools, how can I change brake pads of my $5000 Honda" there will be a lot of very helpful answers or pointers. It is a bit unusual to have all the mechanics to immediately say "leave that to the pros".

However, that seems to be what we saw here. Again I don't want to generalize. But since you have pointed out the obvious, is it a bit of elietism going on here? Are we taking ourselves too seriously?

Have fun, boys. The superbowl is on now.

Good luck Brandon, whatever you choose to do.

Actually, Del explained exactly how to learn to use the tool. A voicing tool may be cheap, but learning to use it is considerably more difficult than most work that can be done by a do-it-yourselfer on a modern automobile.

But then, perhaps you know better how to do it, but too much of an elitist yourself to explain it to other people.

I honestly think this thread has taken a wrong turn and has had somewhat of a bitter twist. I hate to see that. And, I suppose I’m a minor participant in the fray as well. If so, I do apologize to anyone I may have offended.

I used to visit the piano technicians forum regularly and I guess I butted heads a few times with some of the pro techs there, unintentionally, of course. All I was trying to do was be a participant and express what little bit of knowledge I had learned about piano technology when I had the opportunity.

I learned real quick that I was not all that welcomed on the technicians forum because I was perceived as a do-it-yourselfer. In fact, they had discussed banning the DIYer’s from the technician’s forum and creating another forum just for the DIYer's. I reckon I can be just as stubborn as anyone, but I am a fast learner and my professional career has benefited from that fact.

Without rambling on, I will say that the knowledge and skill of the professional piano technicians is priceless and there is a tremendous need for good techs. They are well worth what they charge. I don’t visit the piano technician’s forum much any more, because I just don’t feel welcome or that I have anything of real value to contribute. However, with that said, I did manage to make a couple of tech friends there who are willing to help me with their vast knowledge and skill when I need it. They are a fine group of individuals, and most are highly skilled in their craft.

With all that said, they all (the professional piano techs) had to start somewhere. I do think that some piano owners, with the mechanical and commonsensical ability to do so, can do some types of service on their pianos with a high degree of success, voicing included. The DIYer will never replace the pro, and indeed, may need to call them from time to time.

Does any of this make any sense?

Anyway, I was just trying to smooth things over a bit.

PEACE everyone!

Rick

I started my DIY'er interests in the automotive field, studied, practiced, went to trade school and got a job in the automotive industry that served me for the past 30+ yrs. In the last 5+ yrs, I purchased a nice piano, got interested in knowing how it worked and wanted to do some DIY maintenance. Which lead me to reading, working part-time in a piano rebuild shop for a summer learning, then I lost my "good automotive job".

That lead me to my new interest and in-depth studying(this includes PW and all of it's participants), became an apprentice (from someone willing to spend time -lots of it-, patience and trust), investing in a project piano and devoting time, energy and $$.

I have always started out as a DIY'er, letting my curiosity steer me. It's just that sometimes the learning curve can be a little steeper (along with cost). As they say, you can learn from your mistakes. They always seem to stick in your head a little longer. School of hard knocks.

The corse of events you describe is typical. The question here is "can Brandon afford to learn from his mistakes in this instance?" According to Brandon, he can not.

I plan on voicing my piano. I have already tuned it. While tuning is difficult, it is possible if you take the time to learn what you are supposed to do and have a good ear.

As far as tuning, I use a top of the line tuner to get one string in perfect pitch, making sure the peg is seated properly. The next is brought to pitch by ear although not absolutely perfect in tune. The third is tuned close enough to cause a slow beat. Without any beat, the note will sound like a ball pean hammer on an anvil. A fairly slow beat softens the attack and adds some thickness to the tone. If the beat is too fast, the sound is a bit furry. The real trick is to get every note correct and the same as the others.

A really good tech will do this. An average tech will not pay as much attention to the beat, since they want to get out and to their next job.

I tuned my old piano. Took hours but was very pleased of the end result. I cant tune my Story and Clark because it has an old style of tuning pins, and my modern hammer does not fit the pins.

Maybe on your piano but not on any of my customer's pianos. Your serious?

Watch out for those "pegs", sometimes they don't like being seated but prefer to stand.

You may do a good job and there are good techs around here. You will pay a lot for a good job and the reasonable priced techs will do an adequate job. However, if a piano owner knows what they are doing, they can do a decent job.

I really would warn most people from ever doing any work on their pianos. The tuners are not the precision gear systems used on guitars and so each tuning peg can feel much different than the one next to it. Having multiple strings per note adds the need to get them tuned properly relative to each other. As I mentioned before, perfect unison can sound worse than out of tune.
Besides the tools, one needs to have a good ear and an understanding of what is going on. :-)

So far we've only heard from DIYers who do not regret voicing their own pianos -- including myself I count three of us, or four of us, depending on who all you count.

It would be interesting to hear from the many, many DIYers who actually ruin their pianos when they put a needle in a hammer.

Maybe they're just shy. Would any of these countless, weeping regretful folks like to contribute?

(No sock puppets please . . . I don't believe there is much of a limit to how far some of the technicians here would go to 'win' an argument . . . ).

Yeah, I found the same thing in my first experience with tuning a week ago. If you tune every string of a note absolutely dead-on (in terms of frequency), it does not sound the best. It is actually better to have it a tiny bit off (from each other).

Actually this is commonly used by musicians. For example if you listen to soprano singing, they don't just sing a simple note. Indeed you can hear their voice vibrate around the notes a bit and the voices (with a plural) resonate together in their body or head to form a more "colorful" voice. Interestingly, I learnt that they seem to do it with their ab muscles instead of their throat.

I am having a lot of fun playing my piano (playing = playing by hitting the keys and playing by tinkering). :-)

Or, one could say if there are only three DIYs satisfied with the results of their own voicing work, that's not very many.

Or, one could say that just because they were satisfied doesn't mean the voicing was done well. There are countless Youtube postings by pianists who were clearly satisfied enough to post their performance even though they are, in fact, horrible.

Well, unison width preference is subjective. I prefer them to be as close as possible, and until now, every tuner I've encountered has aimed for that.

Make sure you stretch the scale though. It sounds strange to most people if you don't.

I really appreciate people here who are willing to share their experiences from doing things they love and enjoy for years. That is what I like about a forum. We are here for the same love of the music and instrument, and we are here to support and to share.

Different opinions among people are normal. We discuss them, present reasonings, and see things from different perspectives. So don't worry about our little disagreement.

Hey, what is "stretching the scale"? I saw that term sometimes but have no idea (yet) on what it means.

You would be surprised how bad a perfect unison does sound. I did it and know. It is so horribly metallic and dry. Detuning a bit adds some body and softens the attack. So far, I found that stretching the tuning has not been as important as getting the beats right. If you work the 3 strings right, you can build some body without much of a noticeable eeeooouuu sound.

Speaking for myself as a tech who started out by fiddling with his own piano, I have two opposing goals:

(1) A strong interest in educating people about their own pianos and how they work, and encouraging people to become piano technicians, and

(2) The responsibility as a professional to warn people when something they are attempting might have serious unforeseen consequences.

An online forum is very limited for communicating physical actions like tuning hammer manipulation and aural phenomena like beats -- it's like learning to play tennis by email. So in this case, I err more on the side of #2 than #1, also because I generally don't know the person I'm typing to. With a customer I know, it's much easier to demonstrate something, and also to watch them do it.

You can see this duality in the suggestions to go ahead and experiment on an old piano, not on your brand new Fazioli. It's safe to say that every professional tech has experimented on old pianos as part of their learning.

It's easy to see any reluctance to provide DIY help as taking food out of the mouths of my own children, but I think that's an oversimplification, and unfair as a generalization.

One fact I need to correct is the statement that replacing hammers is a few hundred dollars. The cost for parts alone is somewhere around $500, minimum. Changing hammers means a full regulation, so labor costs are around another $1,000. You may act differently if you're risking $1,500 of damage, compared to $200 of damage.

There are many, many pianos out there that still play, and have a value less than $500. Ask at your children's school or daycare if there's a neglected piano you can work on. Ask a piano dealer if he has a trade-in he doesn't want. Ask your church about the piano in the choir rehearsal room: usually it's spent years in the sanctuary, and has been "handed down".

The PTG has a list of piano-related books:
http://www.ptg.org/resources-books.php

And here's information on how to become a technician:
http://www.ptg.org/becomingATech.php

--Cy--

I had the same experience.





Are you serious? You're serious right?

"Your serious" is worse then "pegs".

A lot has been said here about how unfair it is of piano technicians to decline sharing their knowledge with folks who want to learn something about servicing their own pianos. I think it is more that piano technicians are unwilling to share their skills and knowledge in an inappropriate manner to people who are unwilling to do any of their own homework; who are unwilling to put in at least a minimal amount of effort to learn the basics first and then move on to more advanced operations.

I'm going to repeat what I said early on in this discussion:

Some of you seemed to miss that part about joining your local PTG chapter and start going to meetings and attending classes …, etc. To be sure, joining this chapter will cost something both in time and money (although compared to other professional organizations it's not all that much). But during these meetings, and the technical sessions that are a regular part of them, one can find expert, professional piano technicians freely sharing their knowledge and giving expert advice on just about any part of the craft one cares to ask about.

It is true that most technicians, myself included, are going to be some reticent when asked to teach someone to do a complex procedure before that person has developed the requisite background knowledge and skills. But we're pretty much all willing to help someone gain that knowledge and develop those skills.

I once had a technician ask me to teach him how to rescale pianos and to make new bridges to accommodate those new scales. As I asked questions to get an idea of his background it became evident that he had rarely even held a chisel in his hands. I declined—at least for a time—and suggested that he first obtain some serious woodworking skills and suggested some ways in which he could do this. The man was rather upset at my response—apparently I was supposed to donate my time on his behalf but he was unwilling to donate his own time on his own behalf—and I was left wondering just how he expected to make those new bridges without knowing anything about wood, woodworking tools or how to use either. Bridge making is one of those tasks that requires certain basic skills before it can be done with reasonable competence.

Hammer voicing is another one of those tasks. Most of us have seen firsthand the damage that can be done to hammers by someone who has attempted to voice them before the rest of their skills had advanced to a level adequate to the task. And few of us want to be complicit in helping some amateur to do the same thing. If that amateur wants to bypass the recommended learning curve, so be it, that is certainly their privilege. Books are available to help them on their way and they don't have to ask anyone for advice. They can simply look at a few pictures, read a couple of paragraphs and wade right in. And, to be sure, some few individuals are capable of learning this way. At best they might actually improve their own piano some and, hopefully, the worst they will do is ruin some part of their own piano. As long as they are aware of the risks, are willing to accept those risks and are able to pay for things if they do go wrong, no problem. But the majority of folks do not learn well this way and few professional technicians are going to be willing to help if that is the path chosen. If some of you thinks this is being selfish and arrogant, well, such is life.

But these words do not describe the vast majority of piano technicians I have known over the years. These folks are working professionals who still take time out of their work schedules and family lives to both continue their own education and help each other learn and improve their skills. They have also long demonstrated a willingness to freely share their valuable knowledge and information with the willing amateur to help them on their way. They prefer to do this on their own terms, however. First things first. And it's a two-way street. Most of us expect the person asking for our help to put forth at least some initial effort—the effort required to learn the basics before moving on to the more advanced. I doubt I am alone in classifying someone unwilling to first learn the basics but wanting to jump right into a fairly complex operation as, well, shall I just say less than wise and thoughtful. That's the polite way saying what I'm feeling after reading some of these posts. For more details see my tag line...

Ddf

Fair points for the most part, but my main grievance has been one of prejudice. Sorting the posters here into two categories - professional technicians and non-professional hacks - does not help the OP and does not help the image of professional technicians. It's prejudicial. I'm not saying all the technicians here did that - perhaps only a minority did. But it's off-putting no matter how many do it.

As with any hobby, there are many people doing work on their pianos who have invested many hours into it and have learned a great deal without being paid for their work. As one of these myself, I share the anxiety of the technicians when I hear of someone supposedly tuning their piano well without knowing what an octave stretch is.

Beyond that, I think I've made my point in previous posts.

I am a hack and admit it. ;-) Tuning a piano is not rocket science but involves a number of things that may be beyond what many people could not sense or comprehend.

I’ve not actually ruined a hammer, per-se, but I overdosed a hammer with rubbing alcohol on one of my older uprights and almost killed the tone. To start with it was a lot brighter than its neighbors and afterwards it was soft and mushy and much quieter than its neighbors…. Big learning experience. I slightly over-needled a hammer on my grand piano, but not by much… after playing the heck out of the piano a while, it hardened back up to match the tone of its neighbors nicely.

I have stuck a needle in my finger and got red blood on the pretty off-white hammer felt. Not a pretty sight.

I might add that there has been a few of the pro-techs here that have given me excellent technical information absolutely free of charge and in a very cordial and polite manner. They know who they are and they know they have my sincere appreciation. Some of the advances I have made in my piano-tech learning curve had been due to their help and mentoring.

Here is how I would rate my own DIY piano tech skills….

Tuning… decent to good (have tuned a few other pianos besides my own, for free; I consider the expense in time as part of my education)

Regulating…. By the book… fair to good… can be time consuming.

Voicing….. (an extensive learning curve, as Del stated)… fair, with positive results, usually. I talked with one of my local piano techs about this and they said the only way to learn voicing is to try it, but go slowly.

My biggest fear of screwing something up… voicing

My playing ability…. I hope Pianoloverus never sees any of my YT videos!

Love and peace; and thanks to all the pros here who are willing to help the non-pros.

Rick

I, for one, are guilty of that. Though I did not claim I tune well, I did put my hammer onto my piano without knowing what the "stretch" is. :-)

Since noboday care to answer the question, I searched through the old posts here, and found what the term "stretch" means. The reason makes sense. I will pay more attension to that to my next tuning.

I did the middle octave my measuring the frequency, and tried to do the higher and lower ones by ear. Thinking back now, the sound does seem a bit straige in the sense that what what eliminates the beats does not sound quite right. I had thought all the time that my hearing is wrong. Now that makes sense.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Anyone know the URL for his vids?

[/quote]



Are you serious? You're serious right?

"Your serious" is worse then "pegs".

[/quote]

If you're going to be critical of my spelling then at least get your grammar cleaned up. It should read, worse "than" pegs, not "then" pegs.
Lots of bad grammar be floatin' around these here parts, Pardner.

I love it. More please. I can appreciate all humor - intended or not.

Eh.