Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Educating Lucas

I will echo the same. If I had as much guidance as Lucas does from Bill, I may be in a very different line of work right now.

I forgot to mention one of my pet peeves about grand regulation and one which can make any grand action feel bad is left undone, no matter how well the rest of the regulation is done: The damper upstop rail adjustment!

This grand action was working fairly well, nothing really stood out as needing attention except for a simple capstan adjustment. But at one point, I noticed the "hopping dampers" and sure enough, the upstop rail allowed them to travel far beyond what the key itself would lift the dampers.

Upon investigation, it was found that there was way too much play in the damper and sostenuto pedals. That play was taken up and the adjustment nuts tightened. The damper upstop rail was lowered across the entire piano so that there was only a slight amount that any damper could be lifted beyond what key travel would cause. The damper upstop rail may, in many cases start to rise because of use of the damper pedal. In many pianos, it is nailed into place! The cushioning material may compress over time, so even a rail that was initially nailed in place may be too high.

The feeling that a too high damper upstop rail may generate could be a "slow", "heavy", ill timed effect. As I mentioned, if everything else is correct, a too high damper upstop rail will ruin it! If there are other problems, it will only make them worse!

The comment I had from Lucas in the beginning was that the action seemed "too heavy". This is a fine piano, so I never even thought in terms of trying to change key leads, geometry or anything else before I could get the dirt out of it and at the very minimum. set a decent hammer line. Knuckles always enjoy a little Teflon powder. So, seeing that the alignment was still good, that is all I actually did. The flanges could not be tightened from the rear any more than they already were and the hammer flanges could only take a slight tightening but no more. That is a testimonial to synthetic parts. They stay tight and in alignment so they most often do not need correction.

So, the sum total is that for this action to be perceived as improved and quite satisfactory, the only real adjustments that were needed were to the capstans and the damper upstop rail. A little lubrication of the knuckles may have contributed.

Any situation that a technician may come upon needs a prudent diagnosis and plan for treatment. We can't tell every customer that the piano needs to be completely rebuilt or even very extensive service. It is a matter of determining which kinds of services will be the most effective. Very often, with either a grand or vertical action, cleaning out the dirt first, perhaps some lubrication, tightening loose screws and correcting alignment, perhaps reshaping hammers and capstan adjustment does a world of good and is quite enough. Most common pianos one may find have never had anyone at all that would go even that far.

This is the reality of what most piano technicians far and wide may experience. It does no good to confuse a young technician who will probably face that kind of reality more often than not with the complete opposite end of the spectrum with pianos worth over a hundred thousand dollars and what one may do to improve them to a point that is lost for almost everyone but the most discriminating of artists.

I believe that Lucas has the potential to rise to that level but he does not have the means to go to some prestigious school or to begin working on only the finest of instruments. Anyone participating in this topic needs to keep that in mind. One step at a time. One thing at a time. Don't jump to the highest levels that can ever be achieved and tell a novice from a small town in the Midwest, USA that his work does not meet your standards, whatever those may be. Don't offer to come and show him how it is really done unless you really mean it and you can actually cope with the circumstances. It does no good.

I think this might be a good time in the thread to share this link:

Haddorff Postcard No. 6: "Piano Tuning Made Easy"

Pay attention, Lucas!

--Andy

Bill,

Would it be advisable to tighten the screws before cleaning the action, so that the flange mating surfaces, papering/travelling, parts alignment etc. are disturbed as little as possible by the cleaning process?

Here are a few pictures of the Kawia RX-6 piano before Bill and I cleaned it.

Here is what the piano looked like after Bill and I cleaned it!

Here's how the piano sounded after one typical school day. The tuning held pretty good. The piano needs to be voiced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF4N9CwwQWw

Thanks for posting all the pics, Lucas. Mark, it depends. Scroll down through all the "dirty" pics. Would you want to try to tighten screws through all that mess? I have never seen flange papers be disturbed by cleaning. As for flange placement, one assumes that some correction will be needed. Cleaning won't interfere with that. Sometimes, merely tightening screws will make flanges squirm. A flange spacing tool bit is an essential part of a technician's tools.

The high use institutional piano. Aside from the dirtiness I often wonder if voicing issues get ignored because the piano is almost always played with the lid down.

The idea of tightening before cleaning came from the days of blowers and brushes. With today's vacuum cleaners, getting stuff under loose flanges is much less likely. Also depends how loose the flanges are. Holding dirty parts in line while the screws are tightened serves to spread the dirt around and rub it into the felt more of a judgement call, really.

Thank you, RXD for your contribution. Mark's question is legitimate. Sometimes, flanges are so loose that you can move them with your fingers. I would go back, in this case to the spinet piano that we worked on. One can roughly space the hammers with the action outside the piano. Just get them looking, "kinda, sorta, pretty even", as they say about many things. Then, when the action is back in the piano, do the fine spacing and shank burning.

One may find wippen flanges on a grand action to be so loose that they can be moved with the fingers. What I would do in such a circumstance is blow out the action if it is so dirty that it is the most obvious thing to do first. Then, tighten screws, yes but not so much that a flange spacing tool cannot move them. Sometimes one has to loosen the screw and move the flange laterally and then re-tighten it firmly in order to get the wippen into alignment with the hammer flange.

On some actions, particularly vertical actions, flanges may "squirm" (move laterally) as the screw is tightened. This can happen quite often with vertical action damper flanges. In that case, it is necessary to physically hold the damper flange in place with the fingers while tightening the flange screw. The same can be said for virtually any other type of flange, either grand or vertical.

The further anything about a piano is from being correct, the more it cannot be corrected just one time. That goes for everything: tuning, regulation, alignment, voicing and even cleaning. I always go for correcting the worst problems first, then refine things later. It all depends upon the circumstances. We are not always handling the finest of grand pianos all of the time. That may be what a very few technicians do but for most, it will be a matter of simply improving the condition of whatever kind of instrument we have to work with, considering the time that we have and what the client can afford to pay.

This forum is a general one, so topics and questions can and should be about the full spectrum of piano technology. As piano technicians, it is in our nature to be perfectionists. However, we always have to keep the task at hand in mind and do what we can do at the moment. The bottom line will always be that the client is satisfied with what we have done and what has been paid for it.

In the end, there is no perfect piano that will ever exist. One can only do what one can do within the time period that one has and for the money that is offered. The piano is far too complex of an instrument to ever achieve a state of perfection. We can only be content that we have improved the condition of the instruments we have worked upon on any given day.

Lucas will be going with me and a PTG Associate member this evening to Davenport Iowa to attend the PTG Midwest Regional Seminar. We plan to ask the opinions of many of the finest technicians in the organization regarding unison tuning and test blows.

Lucas recorded himself playing his favorite New Age piece after he tuned the Kawai RX-6 grand piano that we had cleaned earlier this month. He chose to tune it in Well Temperament.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFFSsczOi-0

I would be most excited to hear the results of such discussions Bill. Might they make it a panel discussion?

There seems to some opinions which Lucas finds contradictory regarding whether unisons should be pure (beatless) or not and whether the use of test blows when tuning are necessary and appropriate. He will have many opportunities to ask the finest of technicians those questions.

The PTG Midwest Regional Seminar was a great success! It was impressive beyond my expectations. They roped me in as an examiner while I was trying to check in at the hotel. I thought they would have no need for me in that capacity since I had registered so late. As it turned out, there were many exams scheduled but few examiners actually present.

Unfortunately, there was but one tuning exam actually passed and that one was upon a second attempt after I gave the examinee a tip on how to pass the Pitch score. The Pitch score in itself is perhaps the most unforgiving in that any more than 3 cents off, either sharp or flat will fail. That means that any more than 3/4 of a beat per second against a perfectly calibrated tuning fork will fail. A full beat per second difference will score a 70%, ten points below the failing mark! Using he test note, B1 rather than the usual F2 proved to be the deciding factor in raising a failing score to a perfect 100 % for one examinee.

Out of dozens of exams taken, there was only one new RPT produced. This is a testimonial to the fact that these exams are not easy at all. I would easily bet against anyone who says that they are too easy to fail on the first attempt. The people who say that have never actually attempted them.

Lucas had the opportunity to ask two very important questions of the very finest and most qualified piano technicians there are, including manufacturer representatives, tuning examiners and other piano technicians who are known for their high degree of expertise and professionalism.

Question #1: Are test blows necessary in tuning?

Overwhelming response: Yes

Of course, there were some side comments such as the most highly skilled hammer technique reduces the need for them but the overwhelming response was "yes", particularly in high profile situations such as concert and artist tunings, recording venues, etc.

Question #2: Are unisons best tuned as "pure" or beatless or is some kind of impurity actually better?

The 100% response was "pure".

My take on that is that it is humanly impossible to tune every unison of every piano so that each string of a unison will read at the same exact pitch. Nobody can do that. Nobody. Therefore, the consistent advice given to Lucas was to tune the best and purest sounding unisons possible.

That has always been my advice and I stand by that. Any of this other deviation from that is quite ill advised and should be ignored. No person on earth can tune absolutely perfect unisons that will test out electronically perfect every time. Those who advocate the mis-tuning (or "detuning" of unisons as it has been described on another topic) are only leading promising technicians astray.

I have well read what has been written on this subject. I have waited until now after I have consulted with the finest of the finest technicians. Deliberate mis-tuning of unisons is a complete folly and a hoax. Anyone who advocates it is not to be trusted. It serves only to cloud what can be done with manipulation of temperament and octaves. It is an attempt to put "color" in all the wrong places and at random. It is fundamentally the wrong thing to try to do. If it happens because of circumstances, so be it but to deliberately try to do it is incorrect. I stand very firmly behind that statement and I will not be persuaded by anyone to to bend in the slightest direction from it.

Lucas has already reached the same conclusion. I know from talking with him. He has reached the one and only correct conclusion about unison quality and that is what others have called, "dead". I contend that what others want to bring to life should be directed to temperament and octaves, not to unisons.

This entire topic was created in order to separate facts from fiction. As I see it, there is a lot more fiction than fact regarding both of Lucas' most important questions. I brought him to where he could get truthful and honest answers from the finest technicians that there are to be asked those questions. They do not hide behind a secret name and claim to be in far off places. They are real technicians. They are not selling a course in piano tuning. They are not describing unison tuning in terms that are incomprehensible. They are saying only one thing, as I am: beatless. They are real. All of the others are fiction and fantasy.

I would like to respectfully add that Mario Igrec's "Pianos Inside Out" has a paragraph on unison detuning/coloring. So I guess, at least for him and maybe others, the matter is not so cut and dried. In my own case, I just try to tune them as pure as possible.

I rarely read you totally Bill, your difficulty to clearly demonstrate and explain Weinreich effect and how it is used is pathetic, there is at last a "black hole" in your knowledge or understanding and it is so clear how unnerving to use it is.

As soon you write about you are mounting in turns reaching high levels of blood pressure .

I did not thought you where of the old school to that point.


So I am sorry for you.

PS do not believe it is easy. Not so much at first. But not taking care of coupling of strings and it's effect will lend to faster uneven detuning, this in some way is "programmed obsolescence".
To get maximum long term stability (schools, ) put the tone where it will land by itself naturally in a short time, it will stay there much longer than from "the middle of the road".

While I think some technicians use that expression and tune smileys or 0+0 00+ or the like without mention.

I never would say to a young tuner to tune anything than clean unison, but what does it mean? Where do you want the cleanness to be? At the beginning, at the end of the tone?.

One cannot learn voicing without understanding unison "shape" , "head" of tone for instance, and how it is manipulated at tuning time.
. We are Very lucky because out of some more difficult situations, that is where the instrument want to go, acoustically. We just have to take him by the hand and guide it so it is reassured and do not get to wild, as would do a young dog without training.

We can consider tuning and unison as an equilibrium exercice if we wish, but some equilibrium conditions can be auto alimented, using an initial energy input.

In that aspect getting equilibrium too soon makes a too large use of energy and the hold crash miserably.
Leaving some energy to be used to maintain the balance is keeping the tone lively for more than a few ms.

Now, I also can force all available energy toward a strong attack with enhanced fundamental, and loose about half of the available dynamics.

I recall the first words of Jean François Hesseir (very good pianist) testing a Steinway C I had repaired and I was prepping :

Ah seem like you have" voiced it as an American one"

That comment striked me to learn better. Indeed I was focusing on having plenty of energy on the mellow part of tone, at the expense of the life and managing ability of the top of spectra.
It was sounding nice to me that way, at those times.

Sound nice, but insufficient...