Our Technicians

Our technicians are professional, respected members of the piano community. They have decades of combined experience servicing virtually every kind of piano in all settings, including at home, in the Church, in the Studio, or in Concert.

Piano Terminology

What's Concert Pitch?

Concert pitch A440 (A above middle C vibrating at 440 times per second) has been universally accepted as the pitch to which all instruments should be tuned. It ensures that when instruments play together, they will all be in tune with one another.

Pianos are designed and built to sound their best when tuned to A440. So when your piano's pitch drops due to lack of tuning, the quality of tone suffers.

Also, if a piano is not tuned for quite some time, its pitch begins to slip far enough away from concert pitch that it may require a pitch raise in order to achieve a stable tuning.

What's A Pitch Raise?

Something happens when you don't tune your piano for a long time: every year that passes by, the pitch drops further and further away from where it should be, and it becomes harder for a piano tuner to pull it back up to its proper tension levels. Pianos generally go flat during our long winter months, and do not necessarily rise back up to where they were in the summer.

Technicians have to raise the tension of over 200 strings, which puts a lot of strain on the piano's structure. It's impossible to make such a big jump in pitch and have a stable tuning in one pass. So what they have to do is first raise all the strings to their proper average tension levels, and only then can the piano be accurately tuned. This is called a "pitch raise".

A pitch raise requires more time and effort than a regular tuning, and as a result, a piano technician's fee is a bit higher.

Also, keep in mind that it is highly advisable (usually necessary) to have the piano tuned again within the next 6 months after a pitch raise. This will help keep the tension level of the strings more stable - at the level it should have been in the first place.

Regular tunings - at least once a year (every 6 months is preferable) will prevent the need for a pitch raise in the future. Like many other things, pianos require regular maintenance.

What's Regulation?

The inner playing mechanism, called the "action" of a piano, is an amazingly complex and sensitive machine. Like any other machine, it needs to be kept in adjustment so that it works the way it was meant to work when it was built. Each key on your piano has over 25 points of adjustment which need to work together to produce the sound you hear when you play just one note!

In order to compensate for wear, compacting of cloth & felt, and changes in wooden parts due to humidity, periodic adjustments must be made. Keeping the correct relationship between every part will prevent unnecessary wear, and will make the action "feel right" - that is, each key will function smoothly and evenly throughout the whole keyboard. No more sticking keys, uneven feel, notes that don't do what you want them to do, pedals that don't work properly, squeaks, clicks, rattles, buzzes and so on.

What's Voicing?

Every piano has its own distinct sound or "voice". In many ways, that's how it was built and that is its personality. But over time, the more a piano is played, the more the hammer felt that strikes the strings wears down and compacts.

This hardening can cause the tone to become too harsh or bright, and it's difficult to produce a wide or even range of expression, no matter how much you try to play using dynamics. In other situations, the piano may seem too dull or lifeless for your taste.

Either way, a technician can treat the hammers in various ways: by aligning, shaping, careful needling or hardening the hammers, in order to get the tone you're looking for. Keep in mind, however, that a piano has to be finely tuned and regulated before it can be voiced.

Piano Technicians' Hammer Voicing Tools