Piano Video Lesson: How to Get the Most Out of Your Piano Technician

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

With a question of how to get the most out of your piano technician, first of all, did you know that not all piano tuners are piano technicians? Most are, but some people just tune and that's about it, maybe very minor work.

But a full -fledged piano technician may be able to work on a myriad of issues on your piano, whether you have a sluggish key, a squeaking pedal, or maybe your voicing is harsh and you want something that sounds warmer, or you have regulation issues where it's not even, and a really master piano technician can do wonders with your piano. So how do you get the most out of them? And the answer to this is, first of all, gather a checklist.

Anytime something goes wrong with your piano that you have issues, write it down or put it in a document on your computer that you can reference.

When you set up the appointment with your piano technician, tell them everything. Say it needs a tuning, if the pitch is low, check. You can check with an app, there are many tuning apps that are available for your phone. You can make sure the piano is on pitch. If your piano is dropped in pitch, it's going to take two tunings to get it back, one a rough tuning just to get it in the zone, usually called a pitch raise, and then the second one for the fine tuning, and they have to be prepared to have spent the time to do that. So check the tuning on your piano, make sure A is indeed 440 cycles per second. If you find that it's dropped to 435 or something like that, it's probably going to take a couple of passes of tuning to get it back up to pitch. And incidentally, that tuning won't hold as long because once a piano goes out that far, it takes longer to get stable again with more periodic tunings.

So tell your tuner not just about the tuning or pitch raise, but anything that you would like him or her to address with the instrument. There might be issues with the pedals, with the noise, maybe the action is making noise, whatever it is. And the reason why you want to tell them is they usually set their appointments one to the next to the next to the next, and if they're there tuning and say, oh, by the way, I've got this issue, these last few notes on the piano sound really kind of woody, and I don't know if there's anything to be done about it, the technician says, well, yes, we can adjust the strike point, but I don't have time to do that now, I didn't know, and I've got another appointment to get to. So you see where I'm getting with this. So tell the technician before the appointment so they're prepared to spend the appropriate amount of time with you. Secondly, tell them when they get there, remind them of all the things. And the last point, and so important, unbelievably important, try the piano before they leave and have them allow you to spend enough time to make sure that the issues that you ask them to address have been fixed because these people are very, very busy. I don't know about in your area of the country, but almost everywhere we sell pianos, we sell them all around the country, there seems to be a backlog trying to get tuners, many of them, the fine tuners particularly, have waiting lists of weeks. So be sure you have all of this, you're ready to go because the last thing in the world you want is you have your piano tuned, you tell them all the things that need to be fixed, they leave, you're happy, and you sit there, you're panicking, oh, the pedal's still squeaking, no.

And you can't live with that, it's driving you nuts. It's the main reason you got your piano tuned and it's still squeaking because it's a funny thing. And I'll mention not just squeaking pedal but issues with a noise in the action or a strange response, you might try it, somebody else will pedal and the pedal is totally quiet. And then you pedal a little bit differently, maybe you lean your foot to the side or something and you make it squeak and the piano technician might try it, it works fine for them. So you must try the piano and make sure everything has been fixed.

And those are the tips. So remember, have your piano technician as an ally, make sure you get the right technician who's more than just a tuner but a full -fledged technician who can resolve any issues you have with your piano, tell them when you make the appointment what to expect, remind them when they get there, and then try the piano before they leave. And that will get the most out of your piano servicing.

Thanks again for joining me, I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-piano-technician/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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