Piano Video Lesson: How to Avoid Destroying Your Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos. Today we have such an important subject, what to avoid with your piano.

I've talked about so many things you should do for your piano and what you should do for your piano playing. Today is what to avoid with your piano. Many of these are common sense, but some of these you probably haven't thought of before.

And some of them are really important, like the very first one.

Avoid a hot air vent under your grand piano or behind your upright piano.

You can't imagine the damage that can be done to a piano in maybe just a few short months. That dry air blowing on the soundboard can damage the soundboard, potentially cracking it, warping it, and making the piano for all purposes a total loss unless you're going to rebuild it or even potentially have to replace the soundboard.

Either one of those are very expensive options, so be sure where you place your piano there's not a hot air vent blowing on it. That can really mess things up.

What else? Well, generally there's some just common sense things that I've talked about before.

Having unstable temperature or humidity is really bad for your piano. In terms of the temperature, certain amount of swings won't be a problem for your piano, but big swings of temperature can really affect the tuning stability. Humidity is even more of an issue because if you have too much humidity the parts will rust, the strings, other parts will corrode, it'll affect the whole sound of the piano, strings can start breaking, things like that.

And dryness, just like I talked about, the hot air vent, just excessive dry environment when you're in single digit or even in the teens in humidity, it takes its toll not just on the soundboard. The pin block can dry out and not hold anymore, the felt parts can dry out and the hammers could harden and all sorts of problems. You get noisy action, you might have to do major work on your piano.

So providing a stable temperature environment. Now you can get a humidistat, which just like a thermometer measures the humidity of your room. So you can kind of get a feel for what it should be, which is around 45 to 50 percent is ideal. If you go up or down from that it's not a big deal until you get to 85, 95 percent humidity on a regular basis or as I said single digit or in the teens on a regular basis. Keep an eye on that. You can get a room humidifier or even a damp chaser or piano lifesaver system which mounts underneath your piano to keep things stable.

What else is a problem? Oh my gosh, believe it or not, sunlight. You wouldn't think sunlight would be a big deal. Not so much for the piano itself unless it is shining inside the piano on the soundboard which could affect tuning stability and I guess eventually could affect the integrity of your soundboard. But the finish can get bleached out in a matter of months. I've seen pianos that were almost new and you see when you unfold the fly lid, the front part of the lid of a grand piano, you see a two -tone lid because it's bleached out the part that's folded over and the rest of the tail of the lid but when you unfold it, it's a darker finish. This can happen really quickly even if you have window treatment such as something for UV light. It still can bleach the finish so you really need to avoid your piano getting hot to the touch from sunlight.

Now the next one is such a common thing to find in pianos that is pianos that haven't been tuned in years and some people say, well I haven't played the piano, it just needs to be tuned up. Well, it's not so simple. If a piano hasn't been tuned for years, the pitch can go down and that force that it exerts on the piano getting everything up to pitch can really play havoc with it. Not only that, even if the strings don't break and you don't run into problems, the tuning won't be stable until you tune the piano several times. In fact, even the first tuning, it won't just take a tuning, it'll take several tunings, at least two passes to get it up to pitch and that tuning won't hold for very long. So it's preventative maintenance like changing the oil in your car.

Another thing that can really damage your piano, believe it or not, is simply using furniture polish. You might think pledge or some other polish would make it look really nice and you know at first maybe it does. The problem is the wax will build up and it has to be professionally removed. Really with a finish on a piano, if it's a satin finish like this, just rubbing it with a soft microfiber or pure cotton cloth is great. If you get fingerprints and smudges, just slightly damp, always rubbing in the direction of the lines or the grain of the wood. If you've got a high gloss piano, it's even easier. Once again, a microfiber cloth is great. You can use Windex on it. It won't damage it because it's a sealed finish.

Now, getting onto some maintenance things that can really, really kind of destroy your piano. Piano hammers need to be reshaped from time to time because they get heavily grooved from where the hammer impacts the strings and gives a harsh tone because it's a hardened felt. It's compacted felt.

Well, they need to be reshaped and they get flattened out from impacting the strings so much. You want to get that nice egg shape again. But if they're over filed, you can get down to the wood and destroy your hammers and you have to get a new set of hammers and that's a new regulation. And you're getting into, certainly in the thousands for that kind of work. So be sure anybody who does hammer reshaping in your piano is really experienced or they can do damage.

Now, here's one that you might not think of, but believe it or not, we've known a lot of people who've tried this. They want to tune their piano and think, I can tune it. I'm going to get a pair of pliers or a vice grip, locking pliers.

And you cannot tune your piano with a pair of pliers. It's hard enough with the tuning hammer. Now, the good news is you can get a tuning wrench or a tuning hammer from Amazon. They're not expensive. Make sure you get the one that's not just a square, but one that you can put in multiple places that, you know, it's got, I don't know if it's octagonal or whatever. There's several positions you can mount the tuning hammer on the pins, not just a square head.

And, you know, in many ways, invest in a decent tuning hammer because once you try to tune up one string, you realize you want all the help you can get. Get a good tool for that. And don't attempt it with pliers because you can strip out the tuning pin and then you're really in trouble. You have to replace the pins and they're hard to get out. So you don't want to go there.

Another thing you absolutely want to avoid, and this relates to something earlier about, you know, temperature and humidity, to have a wood stove in the room with your piano is a nightmare. A wood stove is going to suck out all the moisture of the room. If it's too close to the piano, it could damage the finish. If it gets too hot to the touch, the finish will get checked.

It will have alligator appearance and it can dry out the felt. It's just really, really tough. If you absolutely have to have a wood stove in the room with your piano, be sure you mitigate that dryness with a humidifier, a room humidifier to try to get some humidity in that air. You could put a pot of water on the wood stove to get some evaporation, to get some moisture in the air to help.

On the flip side of that is a beach piano. You're at the beach, you don't want the windows open, but your piano doesn't like that. You know, in a matter of, I've seen pianos, 10 year old pianos, all rusted out inside, needed to be restrung. There's a lot of damage that can happen from the beach. Now, if you live at the beach and, you know, you just want those windows open, you've got your piano, you can try a damp chaser system. It's not going to really help all that much because it goes under the piano. It'll protect the soundboard, but humidity doesn't really hurt the soundboard, it's dryness that hurts the soundboard. So you could try a string cover that is a felt cloth that covers the strings. The sound comes right through, you just don't see the pretty strings, but it will protect from excessive humidity if you're at the beach and you just can't, you know, see that you're going to close your windows. Who would want that, right? Certain times of year.

Another thing is having your piano worked on and replacing parts with the wrong parts. What a nightmare. You need new hammers, like, oh, I want nice Steinway hammers. And you think, oh, even though I don't have a Steinway, I want to get that Steinway sound. So you put Steinway hammers on your piano and maybe they're the wrong geometry or they're the wrong weight. And you play your piano then and it's like a truck. It just doesn't work right. So having the right specification parts, whatever they are, is essential for optimal performance or you can really make your piano play terribly.

A really accomplished, experienced piano technician can guide you to the right parts for your piano.

And finally, the last tip for you, and if you like these videos by the way, consider subscribing and you'll get all kinds of great videos on a regular basis. If you subscribe at livingpianos .com, you'll get articles and all kinds of resources anyway, the last tip is for ivory keys. You have beautiful set of ivies in your piano. You want to protect them. So you close your soundboard. Well, no, you shouldn't do that. Why? Well, maybe at night it's okay. But when you close your soundboard on with ivory keys, those ivies will yellow. They'll get yellower and yellower until they're dark yellow, a very, very unpleasant color.

They can be bleached UV light and bleach and it's a process trying to get them light again. But the best thing is just to keep the soundboard open. It doesn't actually protect your piano having the soundboard closed. All it does is it makes the dust collect on the soundboard instead of on the keys. That's really the only thing a soundboard, purpose of a soundboard on your piano. It doesn't really because the air is not really going to get in between the keys and it's not going to protect anything else on the piano. So if you got ivory keys, leave your soundboard open and your keys will stay brighter and whiter than they would if you close it on a regular basis. So those are a whole bunch of tips for you. I hope you like these videos. Again, I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano store. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-avoid-destroying-your-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---