Peterson Piano Tuning

Nov 2015

Dis-assembly, cleaning, and reassembly of all 88 valves in a Milton Player Piano action.

$200

New Orleans, LA

Feb 2015

A neighbor was getting rid of this wonderful little Kohler Campbell console piano a few weeks ago. Overall, it was in really good shape and just too good of a deal to pass up. We picked it up, brought it home, and I proceeded to tinker with it for a little while to find any problems. The only information that the former owner was able to give me was that there were some "sticky keys". This means that a key will produce a sound the first time it is struck, but will not sound with any following strikes. This is probably the single most common issue that people come across in their pianos, not only because people lump several different symptoms under the label "sticky key", but also because there are probably over a dozen different issues that can cause a sticky key. It turned out that the only major problem with this piano was that nearly all of the hammer return springs had corroded and broken. These springs only exist in upright pianos (their role is fulfilled by gravity in grand pianos). Their function is to assist the hammer in falling back to its rest position after striking the string. If they are broken or disengaged, the hammers will not consistently return after striking. This will cause missed strikes during which a key will be pressed, but no sound will be produced. Above is the piano action as it should look, with all hammer return springs intact. This photo was taken after I had finished repairing the springs. Below to the right, you can see how the spring rail looked originally with all of the broken springs still on it. Below to the left, you can see the piano action with the spring rail and hammer rest rail removed.For this repair, I needed to remove the spring rail from the rest of the piano action, but in order to access the screws that hold it on, I first needed to remove the hammer rest rail. This rail is held in place by four steel pins with 90 degree bends in them. Three of the bends point one direction and one points the other direction. Once the oddball pin is removed from the action, the remaining three pins will all slide out in the same direction and the hammer rest rail can be removed. Apparently in some pianos the oddball pin is spring-loaded or has some other method of easy removal. This piano, however, has no such device, and so the action bracket that the pin is inserted into must be pulled away from the pin. There are two screws on the lower end of the action bracket that, if removed, allow the bracket to be pivoted enough for the hammer rest rail pin to be removed.After removing the hammer rest rail, the four screws that hold the spring rail in place can be removed, and the rail can be slid sideways out of the action. First, I need to remove all of the old springs from the rail. There is a hole through the rail that the tail of each spring is fed through. The tail is then bent sharply downward by a machine (which leaves the two parallel indentations) into a slot which holds the end of the spring tightly. I don't own one of these machines, so when I install new springs, I will be making a modification to this rail so that I can install them tight enough.First, I remove the strip of felt that is covering the ends of the spring tails. The glue holding the felt down can be loosened by applying some diluted wallpaper remover to the felt and allowing it to sit for a half hour or so. After removing the felt, pry the tails of the springs out of their slots by using a sewing needle and a small screwdriver. Then, grasp the coil of a spring with a small needlenose pliers and use the pliers as a lever to pull the spring out of the rail.There are several different lengths of these springs, so make sure you buy the correct length for your piano. My piano is a console, so I bought the "spinet" length springs. The measurement you need is from the coil to the end of the curvy part. The modification that I mentioned earlier involves drilling an extra hole for each spring through the spring rail. Some piano manufacturers make spring rails that already have two holes per spring like this. The advantage is that the second hole will allow me to pull the tails really tightly into the wood with a pair of pliers, and eliminates the need for the specialized "parallel indents" machine. To make the holes, I clamped a drill bit just slightly thicker than my spring tails into a pin vise. I then inserted the pin vise into my drill press. The reason for the pin vise is that the chuck on my drill press can't clamp onto something as small as this drill bit. The slots in the rail give me a nice little guide for the drill bit. I'm aiming to go through the rail right at the top of where the strip of felt was glued down.After I've drilled all 88 holes, I can start installing my new springs. I insert the tail through the rail, and use a wire-bending pliers to create a 180 degree bend in the tail. The tail can then be pushed through the hole I just made until it pokes out of the same side of the rail as the body of the spring. I then grab the tail with a set of linesman pliers and, using a lever motion, pull any slack out of the spring until the coil is nice and snug up against its felt.The springs will tend to need a bit of manual aligning and straightening after they are all installed. After they are all aligned, go through and snip the tails as close to the rail as possible.When all of the springs are on the rail, remember to glue your strip of felt back onto the rail (which I forgot in the picture above), and carefully slide the rail back into the action without catching the springs on any other action parts. Reinstall the screws that hold it in and reinstall the hammer rest rail. The springs will probably need to be bent toward or away from the hammers a bit to make the action feel normal again. I try to make them so that they are just barely putting any pressure on the hammers when at rest. If they are applying too much pressure, the hammers will return very quickly, but the action will feel very heavy and cumbersome. Too little pressure and hammer return will be inconsistent and the springs may "click" against the hammers when the note is played.

$300

New Orleans, LA

Feb 2015

The Kimball upright that lives on the covered back porch at my house has had plenty of issues that I've been knocking out one at a time over the past year or two. Probably the most annoying problem is that many of the tuning pins are not as tight in the pinblock as they should be. The pinblock is a laminated block of hardwood mounted in the piano with holes drilled in it that the tuning pins fit tightly into. In this piano, as with many others, the pinblock is hidden behind parts of the piano cabinet as well as the cast iron plate. Some of the tuning pins here turn with only a pinky finger's worth of force on my tuning wrench. That's not good, and it means that this piano only holds a tune for a very short amount of time before the tension of the strings and the pounding of the hammers causes them to go flat. In Pianos Inside Out by Mario Igrec, he describes several labor-intensive processes to remedy this problem including replacing the original tuning pins with oversize ones or even replacing the entire pinblock. However, he also details a much simpler process that can be used if the pinblock still has integrity but just needs a bit of extra friction on the tuning pin.To tighten up the tuning pins, he recommends treating the pinblock with CA glue (a.k.a. "super glue"). The piano needs to be laying on its back so that gravity will pull the glue through the holes in the cast iron plate and into the pinblock. In the picture above, I've strapped the piano to an appliance hand truck which will give me more control when tipping the piano.Here you can see the holes in the plate that I will be feeding the glue into. In some pianos there are wooden bushings that support the pin as it passes through the plate. This piano does not have these bushings. This makes applying the glue much easier, since it doesn't need to pass through a bushing before getting to the pinblock.I ran a couple of two-by-fours down through the handtruck in order to get more leverage while tipping the piano. These things are heavy, so make it as easy as you can and get a friend or two to help. I've also laid down an even larger board that I will rest the piano on. This board will make it easier to get the piano back upright after the repair is finished. Make sure you remove the action from the piano before you tip it over!Here is the glue that I will be using. I bought this from the wonderful folks at Pianotek Supply Company. Basically, this stuff is just really thin super glue. Normal super glue is too thick to really penetrate into the pinblock. Don't glue your fingers together and try not too breathe in the fumes.The little straw helps me to get the glue right into the tuning pin hole. I just keep adding glue until it seems saturated and the hole stays full for a few seconds. All of the tuning pin holes need to be glued in one pass because after the glue has dried the pinblock will be sealed and any glue applied after that won't penetrate the wood.I ended up using a little under 2 oz. of CA glue for this, which is less than half of the bottle that I bought, but would have been about 20 of the standard size tubes of super glue. I let the pins dry a few hours before tipping the piano back upright. I then let it dry another couple of days before attempting to tune it and I can say that there is definitely an improvement in the torque required to turn the tuning pins. Apparently there is debate about the longevity of this repair which I can't comment on yet, but I'll trevisit this post later to comment on it.

$200

New Orleans, LA

Jan 2015

So, this will just be an introductory post that will lead to several in-depth posts in the future. My roommate came across this Milton player piano for free on Craigslist, so we went to Algiers Point a week or two ago and picked it up. The bellows and player mechanism are not airtight, but are in remarkably good shape compared to the rest of the piano. In the first few pictures you can see the piano with the player mechanism (as well as most of the keys) removed. Half of the white key ivories are missing, most of the black ebony keytops are as well. The steel pins that hold the keys in place are very rusty. All of the key buttons have come unglued. My next post about this piano will likely cover replacing the keytops, re-gluing the key buttons, and replacing the key bushings of all 88 keys.I always number the keys before removing them from the piano. This is extremely important because every key has a unique shape that is not interchangeable with any other key. They usually have numbers stamped into them by the manufacturer, but these are often difficult to decipher. Better to just renumber them in pencil or marker. Because the key buttons are unglued, I also numbered those to match the keys, in case any of them fell while I was moving things around.When removing the keys, I keep them taped together in groups of 10-20. In this case I taped over the key buttons to keep them in place as well. Normally I would tape them between the buttons and the keytops.All of these pictures were taken after I spent probably 45 minutes cleaning several rats' nests out of this piano. Take extra care when working with a piano that has had rodents in it, as their feces can carry diseases that are transmissible to humans. Wear a surgical mask and gloves.The piano action itself is not in too bad of shape. The hammers are worn and some have been chewed by rodents and/or come unglued.Player pianos rely on suction created by the pumping of two pedals to operate the pneumatics that control the piano. The previous picture shows a hole in the reservoir component of the bellows. If the whole system isn't airtight, the player mechanism will not work correctly, if at all.The next couple pictures show what is known as the "top stack". This includes the tracker bar which "reads" the music rolls as well as a series of valves and pneumatics that translate suction into a push on the hammer of a specific note. Also included is the wind motor which controls the movement of the music roll across the tracker bar.

$1

New Orleans, LA

Jan 2015

The damper pedal on my Kimball upright snapped in half the other day. This is not a particularly common problem to have, and the repair involved some metalworking (which is a field that I suspect most piano technicians don't have much experience in).The repair process involves removing the broken pedal from the piano, cleaning both pieces, brazing them back together, sanding the repair smooth, and reinstalling. Normally to remove a pedal on this piano, the entire piano must be tipped onto its back to remove the screws that hold the toe board on. The toe board is the horizontal piece of wood that has square holes for the pedals to extend through. In this case, the front half of the pedal was broken off and so the back half could be slid back through the toe board and removed from inside of the cabinet.There are four screws that had to be loosened before the pedal could be removed. The pedal operates by pivoting on a steel pin that is held on either side by a block of wood. Also, note the steel wire that acts as a spring to return the pedal to its resting position when downward pressure is released. Once the four screws are loose, the wood blocks can be pulled away from the pedal, and the pedal can be pulled out toward the top of the picture.Here you can see the pin that keeps the pedal from being pulled out of the front of the piano while the toe board is still in place. The pin can now be popped out with a hammer and punch. Removing it will allow me to later reinstall the pedal through the front of the toe board, and then tap the pin into place through the wood blocks and back through the pedal itself. While I have the pedal removed, I will also replace the felt bushings on the pin that reduce friction and provide quieter operation.A clean joint is imperative for creating a strong bond while brazing. I use multiple grits of emery cloth for cleaning up these joints. Here you can see the clean joint that is ready to be fluxed and brazed. I've recently acquired a new brazing system. I still have my old setup with standard oxygen and acetylene tanks and Smith torch and regulators which I will use for heavier duty brazing and cutting. The new setup is much lighter duty and consists of a BBQ propane tank, a medical oxygen concentrator, and a lightweight Smith torch. The main advantage to this system is convenience. I only have to go 5 blocks to the nearest Walgreens to refill the propane, rather than 12 miles to refill my acetylene and oxygen.With my joining surfaces cleaned up, I brushed on my "Stainless Light" Silver Brazing Flux from Cycle Design USA and proceeded to fire up my oxy-propane torch. I brazed the pedal back together with 56% silver (also from Cycle Design USA) which worked fairly well. I did end up with a small spot that didn't fill in. I think the pedal was just a little too thick for this torch to be really effective. The oxygen concentrator can only put out about 8-9 psi, and I'm still figuring out the right pressure ratios. It seems the propane needs to be at much higher psi than acetylene does for brazing. On the bright side, the joint survived my testing, which consisted of holding the pedal on the square end and banging the round end against the table.With the brazing done, I filed down the excess filler and sanded it smooth with emery cloth. I then reinserted the pedal through the toe board and tapped the steel pin back into place with the new felt bushings. I could have applied some kind of clearcoat to the pedal to keep it from rusting, but with the amount of friction this pedal will see against peoples' feet, I think I will just give it a rubbing of mineral oil every once in a while.

$100

New Orleans, LA

Jan 2015

Broken strings can be a common occurrence on certain pianos, especially if it is an older instrument, has been exposed to high humidity, or is played with a heavy hand. Most of the time, the strings that break will be the thinner ones in the highest section of the piano. Unlike other string instruments in which each string only has one speaking segment, these strings actually have two. The string starts at a tuning pin at the top of the piano, runs down through several guides, does a 180 degree bend around a hitch pin at the bottom, and then runs back up through more guides and into another tuning pin. Except in the bass section, each note of the piano is produced by three different speaking lengths of strings. I have already replaced several strings in this piano (the new ones are much shinier), but still have a few to replace.

$15

New Orleans, LA