Piano Tuner West Virginia Describes a Piano Action

As your piano tuner West Virginia and the surrounding areas, I find that piano owners are often uninformed about the piano action portion of a piano.  A piano action consists of all the mechanical portion of the piano from the keys up to the hammers that strike the piano strings. This post is designed to give some basic information about this important part of a piano.

The piano action is relatively complex in design, because mechanically it is relatively difficult to have a piano hammer strike a string once, then rebound allowing the string to vibrate freely, then stop the string from vibrating, and be able to repeat the whole process immediately. In order to accomplish all this, a piano action has ten major adjustments and numerous minor alignments. Since the piano action is made out of wood, felt and buckskin, these adjustments need to be regulated from time to time.

Alignment problems can occur when the wood warps slightly as it ages. If the warping is significant enough, a part may touch an adjoining part, causing the note to malfunction. More commonly, notes get out of adjustment because of compression of felt parts. Typically, two of the ten major adjustments need to be regulated every three to five years. Those two adjustments are the “hammer blow” distance and “lost motion.” They are usually regulated at the same time.

The hammer blow is the distance from the string that the hammer sits when at rest. This amount differs slightly from brand to brand, but it is usually designed to be around 1 3/4″. On a vertical piano, as the felt on the hammer rest rail compresses with age, this distance becomes too long. At the same time, the felt in two other places in the piano action gets compressed, as well, resulting in “lost motion.” Lost motion manifests as play in the top of the piano keys before anything happens in the action. When these two things occur, the pianist loses sensitivity of touch. That is, control over dynamics becomes much more difficult, so that playing a beautiful line of music becomes impossible.

On a grand piano, the single adjustment of the hammer blow distance takes care of the problem, without the need to adjust lost motion.

Each of these adjustments are checked at the time of tuning, when you call your piano tuning West Virginia expert, Harker Piano Service. Please give us a call for quality piano service.