Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Downweight and upweight?

Hello,

I`ve a Console yamaha (vertical), I wonder if anyone could tell me what downweight is right to have in my piano. Could you explain me also, what is upweight and how it is measured. I want a quite heavy piano, but over all, very sensible.

Thank,
Danme

In order to check up and down weights you would need some weights that would fit on the ends of the natural keys of known mass. Coins will work.
For down, depress the damper pedal to take the damper return spring out of the measurement. Then add more mass to the end of the key until there is just enough to cause the hammer to move through its full travel and bottom out the key. 50 grams would be a normal number but this could vary considerably for a variety of reasons. For up weight do the reverse. Depress the key fully and add/remove mass at the end of the key and release it. It should come all the way up - with the damper pedal depressed.
30 grams is not an unusual number. On small uprights these numbers can vary quite a bit. Large discrepancies up and down the keyboard need to be identified. Friction from keys and pinned flanges need to be corrected. What remains is what you are stuck with unless you want to investigate farther which gets more complex.

When measuring downweight, the key should not completely bottom out. It should only go to the point of letoff but not beyond.