Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Replace or Refurbish and 30 yr old Steinway Action?

Piano is not like all other instruments. All musicians have to tune their instruments by themselves, except pianists. Why? Because it is damned difficult! It takes years of practice to correctly tune a piano!

In the same way, a pianist has not to learn to regulate and voice his piano. He better uses his time to learn to play it and let technical issues to specialized technicians.

A pianist will only do a mediocre job of regulating a piano. Not to talk about perfection. The only way to get a piano to "live at the edges of perfection" is to have a Craftsman, a
Master Piano Technician working on it constantly, in a daily basis.

Did Vladimir Horowitz work on his piano? No, he hired Franz Mohr. Franz Mohr worked for years keeping care of Horowitz's pianos. He went with Horowitz around the world wherever he was going to play. That's the way it is.

For the sake of your piano, have it regulated by a competent technician. To get the full potential of a fine piano like a Steinway & Sons needs a lot more than an enthusiastic pianist striving to learn.

There are some competent technicians in the U. S. that can do a professional work on your piano! And if you do it regularly it won’t cost you a fortune. A S&S is worth it!

I pretty much agree, Gadzer, and I don't recommend that people muck about inside their pianos. But, in the end, it's HIS piano--if he wants to light it on fire, nobody can stop him.

The next best thing is for him to learn to do it properly.

Yeah but when he doesn't understand that what he did by increasing the spring preesure was compress the felt of the rep adjustment and raise the lever so the jack can get back under the knuckle. Now you have two adjustments that are wrong instead of one.

And that's only two out of a whole bunch. Maybe he has letoff right until you check the bedding of the frame. Change that and letoff changes. Now none of the adjustments are right. When you have adjustments that interact with each other, it is far mre complicated than just saying letoff is 1mm to 3mm. tapered to the bass.

Regulation is a procedure that gives feedback and needs to be analyized as you do it.

It certainly is not impossible for you to learn to regulate a piano. Have some respect when we tell you the learning curve isn't as easy as it looks.
I would be willing to bet that after working on your action for a year, you couldn't pass the grand action regulation part of the RPT test.

Oh dear.....

You know, I've been living in houses since the day I was born....
Tell you what, seeing that I have so much experience of living in a house I think I'll build one....

Doesn't look too difficult to dig a trench...throw up some framing...
Nail a few bits of wood together..
Easy I'd say.....

Sir, you dishonor this profession by even suggesting the idea...

You are wasting our time.

Why not try making a pair of shoes....you've got a lot of experience of walking outside I presume...just get a bit of leather and a sharp knife etc....

OK< so I'm getting silly now....
Must go and lay down.

I've been going through the replies on this thread with much gratitude, mining it for information. I love the replies that pass along some knowledge.

I love to be told I am doing something stupid --if the person tell me will follow up by telling me what exactly is so stupid! I have a thick skin. Tell me honestly if I'm acting the fool.

For the well wishers, I thank you. But I am well served by anyone who can pass along information. I understand I am a neophyte here and the risks that the actions I might take are really dumb and enormous.

Fred Brooks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks) my mentor from college was fond of saying:

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.


I take that to heart, and expect that in order to acquire experience, I am going to have to exercise lots of bad judgment!


The folks in this forum can help the speed the process by pointing out where my bad judgment lies.

So to respond to some earlier traffic:

From Kieth Robert's Response
---------------
Yeah but when he doesn't understand that what he did by increasing the spring pressure was compress the felt of the rep adjustment and raise the lever so the jack can get back under the knuckle. Now you have two adjustments that are wrong instead of one.

And that's only two out of a whole bunch. Maybe he has let off right until you check the bedding of the frame. Change that and let off changes. Now none of the adjustments are right. When you have adjustments that interact with each other, it is far mre complicated than just saying let off is 1mm to 3mm. tapered to the bass.

Regulation is a procedure that gives feedback and needs to be analyzed as you do it.
------------------

Yes! This is exactly the sort of thing I was afraid of! I might cure the symptom by making some adjustment somewhere in the "power train" of the action but that throws off other things. Sort of like fixing a runny nose with a caulking gun. You stop the nose from running, but it is going to create other problems.

The felt compression is one of the problems I was thinking about. It seems to me that one of the major reasons for having to re-regulate anything is the fact that felt compresses over time. A new action will need to be babied along for years before things settle in become more stable. Something good about an older action may be that the felt is already compressed and changes to it are very slow now. Eventually it may need replacing, but one shouldn't jump from stable old felt to instable new felt on mere whim.

This is just my theory. I don't know. I'm just going through the process of thinking and forming theories. It is not like I have any experience. But I have a brain, and am trying to use it.

Thanks for the input, Keith. You can beat me up all you want, as long as your hand me some concrete knowledge while your are doing it.

Very much appreciated!

Some good information from Keith Roberts:
-----------------------------------------

There is a screw that adjusts the height of the rep lever in relationship to the jack. Adjusting the spring to make that adjustment is not good and now you have the adjustment of the spring incorrect.

There are 37 steps to grand regulation and they need to be done in order. By jumping around like you are, you are taking the action even farther out of regulation. Like you have been told, you don't know enough make these adjustments. I suggest you study for couple of months until you know all the parts and the adjustments for them. Then when we ask you if the frame has been bedded properly, you understand and have some sort of clue.
Did you tell teachers in classes you took that you were doing things right and you didn't need to listen to what they were saying?

----------------

I do have a book on order am am planning some more serious study before diving in again. My main guide for my current effort was a web page written by another amateur. I would be interested in opinions of the merits of his guidance. His writeup is at http://www.middlebury.edu/~harris/piano.regulation.pdf

It was the best I had to go on when I started in.

As for the jack height adjustment, I learned pretty quick to stay away from it. The slightest change really breaks everything. Just a slight tweak and then the hammer gets caught on the backstop and the nightmare's begin. I learned pretty fast to stay the heck away from that one!

To pull out the Ferrari analogy. I might pull and gap the spark plugs on my Ferrari. But, I would stay away from the timing belt. To me, the jack height adjustment is the timing belt.


Gadzr writes:

---

Did Vladimir Horowitz work on his piano? No, he hired Franz Mohr. Franz Mohr worked for years keeping care of Horowitz's pianos. He went with Horowitz around the world wherever he was going to play. That's the way it is.

For the sake of your piano, have it regulated by a competent technician. To get the full potential of a fine piano like a Steinway & Sons needs a lot more than an enthusiastic pianist striving to learn.

----------

I hear what you are saying, but you must have me confused with someone who can actually play the paino. I'm no Horowitz. I love his music, and when I play, I hear him in my head, and I think I am doing what he does...

But, then, play back my own recordings, and they sound so horrible and so amateurish that I just want to give up and go back to listening to records.

Believe me. Horowitz was right to hire someone like Mohr.

I'm no Horowitz.

I'm no Mohr.

I'm just humble little Mark Cornwell struggling along, trying to have some sort of relationship with music and this instrument called a piano. My circumstances are entirely different.

Don't assume that I can play well. I have a great enough appreciation for music to know for certain that I am a very bad pianist!

If I screw up the piano, the world has not lost much. It's only me, after all.

Where I a Horowitz, the sin would be much greater.

As for where to go next, it has occurred to me that it could be fruitful to start with some non-invasive procedures as prelude to further regulation. Before changing anything, I could take some measurements and understand what I have to start with.

I could measure the amount of force it takes to sound the notes. If I place a weight right on the key, and then let go with hand, it will fall on the key with very predictable and constant force. How the key reacts to that force when it sounds reflects how evenly the piano play. I can hook up my recording equipment and write some software to analyze the sound files that result from this experiment. Using different weights, I should be able to build a profile that shows me for every key, how may decibels are produced for each different key weight. That should give me some indication of the evenness of touch with respect to volume.

I can this further and explore other dimensions. I could run a Fourier analysis on the waveforms in the the sound files to gauge the evenness of the tone produced for each key and weight. This would give me a gauge as to how consistent the tone is from one key to the next.

Hmm, I could imagine capturing the fall of the weight itself with some feed back positioning device like I use in robotics to measure the position of the weight in space against time as it falls. This should produce a graph that would show this roughness at the bottom of the keystroke that I complain about.

As I think more about it, all this seems so obvious that manufactures must already have done it long ago. I expect there are published works debating the relative merits of specific curves and analysis of ideal relationships of these things. Perhaps, I should start as I would in my professional life -- a literature search of the current state of science in this area.

I understand the Fazoli folks were big on this sort of thing. I could start with them.


What I like about this plan, is that it plays to my strengths. My talent, education, and profession are all grounded in mathematics, physics, and computer science. So here, I am centered in my area of competence rather than my area of ignorance.

In chess, you attack in the parts of the board where your are strongest. You play where you have the advantage.

I will keep you posted on what develops.

Cheers!
--Mark

Mark,

I quickly reviewed the excerpt from the Harris manual you attached. WHile I applaud his desire to pass on knowledge I must also point out that his understanding is lacking.

ie, Mr. Harris places many things out of order. He has let-off mentioned near the end of his brief desciption. It should be on of the first items . He downplays the importance of backcheck adjustment. If this adjustment is not consistent it is not likely that repetition spring tension can be properly judged. (Especially by an amatuer).

His understanding seems to be very rudimentary and more of what adjustments can be made rather than what those inter-realtional changes willl be.

I would suggest trying to get a copy of the "37 Steps to grand regulation" put out by Yamaha, authored by Laroy Edwards. As Keith mentioned, it would be a better guide. It might be difficult to obtain though the steps themselves are not. KNowing the steps and understanding how and why are different propositions.

Another resource would be the PACE lesson plans for grand regulation available through www.ptg.org/store This publication is much more oriented to teaching the how and why. It was compiled mainly by Bill Spurlock in the 80's.

Perhaps "A Guide to Field Repairs" by Steve Brady would also be useful. Also available at ptg.org. You may need it if you continue on this course.

Sorry, duplicate post.

Dear Dear Mark. If that Steinway is yours and paid for, I think you should just go ahead and ruin it, if you haven't already. I've been rebuilding pianos for 30 yrs. now & I still learn something new almost every day. In piano work a 1/16th of an inch might as well be a mile. Why else would under key punchings be as they are?
Our shop now refuses to work on pianos that have been screwed-up by people like you because we can't guarantee the outcome. Have fun. Karen

Mark..I felt bad about blowing you off last night because you are so ernest. But you must start at the beginning. Bed your key frame to the key bed. Then level your keys, then set the dip. Then get string height and set hammer height Then you are ready to regulate action for touch. If you don't, you are taking the steering wheel out of your car and still calling it a car.Karen

Mark..I felt bad about blowing you off last night because you are so ernest. But you must start at the beginning. Bed your key frame to the key bed. Then level your keys, then set the dip. Then get string height and set hammer height Then you are ready to regulate action for touch. If you don't, you are taking the steering wheel out of your car and still calling it a car.Karen

Karen,"Our shop now refuses to work on pianos that have been screwed-up by people like you because we can't guarantee the outcome." If you stand by your statement, you must be turning away work in droves. In the smaller sampling of pianos that I have rebuilt over the last 20 years, techs have done as much damage out of ignorance or poor judgement. I sort of thought it was the job of a good tech to set right all of the ills. This is not rocket science after all. Most specs are available for even out of production instruments and when they are not you can fairly easily divine most of these specs. If damage was done to action parts, most are readily available and easily replaced. The only question would be what to charge the customer for your expertise. As for Mark, I would suggest buying the Reblitz book for starters and investing in some basic regulating tools and a full set of regulating punchings. If you are not totally overwhelmed,you will likley eventually figure it out. If you don't break action parts in droves, someone else can pick up the pieces and correct the deficiencies. The piano fairly well tracks the laws of physics, but I think that it pays to have a mechanical backround when working with actions.

John, I guess you haven't seen a piano where the owner wanted to make the tuning pins look better, so they sprayed the pins and pinblock with WD-40 or silicon, or even a grand where they put elmer's on tuning pins that were not holding. Nor the the guy who wanted to clean the inside of his piano, so he put it on a trailer, took it to a car wash, and steam cleaned it. Action and all.
After 30 years, I've seen a lot. But I still glory in restorating a beautiful piano. But I will no longer waste my time telling some dullard that they have ruined their pinblock that they can't afford to replace it. Why would you?
karen

Karen, the instances you cite, amusing though they are, show that folks can be morons. We all know this is possible.(I really liked the steam clean one though!)

There is nothing in Mark's comments that indicates this sort of thought pattern. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We all had to start somewhere. If he were in Texas, I'd invite him over.

Elmer's glue on tuning pins...

I guess it was a DIY who first used CA to inmobilize a tuning pin and EUREKA it worked better than was intended!

BTW, CA gluing is not mentioned in my Piano Tech Course. Is it a recent discovery?