Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum One sticky damper.

I've never posted to this forum before. I have a Steinway L, early 1960s vintage, in very good shape.

Over the last 6 months or so, I noticed that the damper on the Ab below middle C would "hang" periodically. It eventually goes down, sometimes quite quickly, and always within a second or so, but the continuation of the sound is really bothersome.

This had been going on for a while, and I had my technician check it when he was tuning the piano. I didn't speak with him afterwards, but I thought he had fixed it.

Well, it's doing it again. One thing I remember was that it was particularly dry and cool on the day he came over. I'm not sure the damper "did it" while he was here. I live in the south, and while we run the heat and the AC, the interior humidity can vary pretty widely, particularly on moderate days when nothing runs at all.

Do you folks think this is related to humidity? Any suggestions about what I should say to my technician when I have him back over?

Thanks for any help that you can give me.

Very possibly.
Fix it.

What BDB meant to say was have him/her pull the action out, remove the damper, check the underlever for sticking and re-pin (not lube) if needed. If it's not the underlever, bend the damper wire and/or ease the bushing. Check all other dampers for slugish response while the action is out. The dampers should fall back to the strings with a "plop".

I'd write more, but my helicopter just arrived - have an emergency tuning.