How to Prevent Damage to Your Piano
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- livingpianos.c...
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. Today we have an important topic: How to avoid destroying your piano. While we've discussed many things you should do for your piano, today we'll focus on what to avoid. Some of these tips are common sense, but others might surprise you.
Thank you for this video. I recently visited a friend whose piano whose keys were thick with dust…the Damp chaser piano system has worked very well in the dry climate of Montana.
My 1863 Broadwood & Son was crated and stored in a warehouse 45 years. Replaced a few strings and she plays well and looks nearly perfect. What luck. 😊
Thank you for this. 😊
Here in Arizona the relative humidity hovers at 10%.
My houseplants help keep the music room at 30%, but when it rains and the humidity goes up past 50% is when my Knabe Baby Grand really sings!
The swelling of the wood breathes even more life into the sound. 😁
Never let the humidity go below 25%. If it drops to 15% or lower, the water that is lost from the wood is integral to the molecular structure and can never be resorbed - the wood will be permanently shrunken.
Great video Robert 👍👍
We have a whole house dehumidifier here in Delaware, which keeps the humidity at about 50% year round. Temp is 68-78 F. and the piano is very happy. It’s not in direct sunlight ever.
My sister had a brand new Yamaha C3X Grand Piano for her new house in Parañaque city Philippines and it was placed near A big window but luckily she covered it with a cloth made grand piano cover
Does she keep the room Temperature and humidity controlled, and avoid direct sunlight as much as possible when in use?
@@hellopsp180 yes she did
Good comprehensive discussion, but more relevant for Americans than Europeans. In the UK we don’t have hot air vents, we mostly have radiators. A major mistake people make is putting a piano in front of a radiator. If you have to have it there, turn the radiator off permanently, and ensure it never leaks!
An 84-inch foam-core board can effectively prevent heat transfer from a gentle hot-water radiator. Steam heat is much worse and your advice should be taken in that case.
11:00 - Tip about ivory keys yellowing. I never knew the cover does that. I have always left it open for "ease of access" But i guess now i have 2 reason to keep it open or even just get rid of that and put it somewhere in storage instead.
As far as I know houses in the USA usually have either radiator heatings or hot air vents. Here in Germany new buildings almost exclusively have a central heating unit with underfloor heating circuits in every room. The entire floor gets heated to maybe maybe 2 or 3 °F (1-2 °C) above the prefered ambient temperature, heating the air over a huge surface.
These underfloor heatings, which are hugely comfortable, they are said to be grand piano killers, especially for pianos built before around 1980. since then I read that manufactureres artificially dried the wood before building the piano, so they are quite dry anyhow and therefore cannot dry. But the older ones, that have been built from wood that had been naturally dried and therefore is a bit more moist will dry in the underfloor heating convection over two or three years and might crack.
Since my house is thickly insulated so the heat does not get out easily (three panes in every window, about 18 cm (7 inch) of insulation layer built around the entire house), it does not really matter, where the heat is generated, as long as there is a connection, and since my entrance area and kitchen are connected to the living room where my piano stands, I just regulate the temperature in these two rooms and turn the heating in the living room off. The room remains comfortably warm, but no warm air is generated directly under my 1908 Blüthner.
I got a 1898 epworth upright piano that wasnt tuned for 30+ years and it was 20 cents low my tuner pulled it up to pitch 3 months later he came back and it was almost perfectly tuned there was a few string that had to be touched up
Very informative video
Yes! And could you do a video on accessories for the piano, covering-- digital player systems (which I don't like) harmful to piano?) soft lid close attachment (very helpful to me because of arthritis, lid too heavy for my wrists to lift), benches, artist stools, and maybe another video about best recording practices. Thank you very much! 🎹
Here’s one for you: livingpianos.com/does-installing-a-player-system-affect-the-touch-of-your-piano/
@@LivingPianosVideos Thank you! Good to hear your thoughts on this.
two things missed:
- non-ivory keys will yellow if you leave the fall board open. Close it if you have plastic whites.
- wood finish pianos: use Old English Lemon Oil. Anything else could damage the finish.
I have just been asked to check out a six year old Steinway 9" grand in a house that has not had central heat and air for 18 months. The owner is in a assisted living facility during this time. I found mold on everthing in this house. The strings were rusty and all of the keys were swelled and stuck. The hammers had blowed up like cotton balls. The two very large Allen organs were also dead. Over $500,000 dollars turned to scrap wood and metal. Thanks for this video. Maybe someone will keep this from happening to their investment.
Tragic.
dehumidifer has made a huge difference in tuning stability living near the coast.
If a string or two has been replaced, how many tunings or years does it take to stabilise. It has been tuned about 6 times in 18 months but this note is still going flat within a couple of months. I reckon when it was first replaced it went flat in the first week.
It can pay to invest in rudimentary tuning equipment so you can touch up the new strings until they stabilize.
My piano has the wrong hammers and it sounds kinda muffled in the lower registers. It was suppose to have small uniform hammers which I can't find and need to make myself but someone put modern ones but the ones that are on it are the same length unlike modern ones so I don't have any issues with them hitting the lower strings too soon but the weight of the action isn't consistent like if it had the uniform hammers restored.
I had an 1850s ronisch for a while until finding out the shop I bought it from hid all the issues and made them take it back but it had hammers that were way too big and it sounded muffled and they were hitting the dampers and getting stuck so I had to file a few of them down. This was done by the only piano shop in my area with horrible customer service where you just get yelled at if you question anything or want something they don't offer leaving no option other than restoring my own piano.
Preventing temperature swings is so hard where I'm at. I have my piano in my bedroom and need to take my air conditioner out of the window when I leave but the room gets hot quickly as soon as I shut it off. Otherwise the humidity is fairly consistent in the 50-60% area.
Another thing to consider with getting a proper tuning wrench is not getting a cheap one. Those little ones you showed on the amazon screenshot don't fit over the pins well and pose a risk of stripping while being too small leads to overshooting it frequently. I had one like that and it was awful even on my console piano that didn't have perfectly tight pins but when I tried it on an 1850s ronisch piano that had new pins, I stopped, threw it away and took the bag out before I got tempted to get it back out and ordered a proper one that still benefits on the piano I have now even though the pins are really loose.
Tip for DIY piano tuners. The first tool you need is a telephone to call a piano tuner. NEVER attempt to tune your own piano. Piano tuning is a professional skill.
@@velcroman11 🤣🤣That's a Dick Gregory-inspired line if I've ever heard one.
Bob🎉who was the American pianist who would be 100 or so who played all of Chopin? Including fine Concerti and Etudes.He has passed?
- Don't let dust accumulate! it will fall into the action and add friction, making the action feel heavier over the years.
- Dont touch the strings with your fingers! It will accelerate corrosion.
- Don't clean keytops with rubbing alcohol! It may strip off the finish.
Fall board keeps cats off the keyboard
If you invest tens of thousands in a piano, you really need to invest in a digital hygrometer/thermometer and appliances to control the temperature and humidity. Keep the temperature and humidity as steady as possible. About 72ºF and a dew point of about 55ºF. When I had a piano, I had a window air conditioner pointed away from the piano, dehumidifier, humidifier, and heater to keep the conditions of the room stable.
My tuner told me years ago that the best type of heating is not central heat (too dry), but a floor furnace (just don't place the piano near it).
@@2Hearts3 Central air/heat is terrible for pianos. I used an oil-filled radiator for heat, and if it got very cold, I'd use two on the lowest setting, instead of raising the heat on one. Gotta avoid hot spots
@@peter5.056 Central heat and air in the Midwest USA. In the fall when temperatures drop and the central heat comes on, I place a room humidifier in the room set at 50%. In the spring when heat is no longer needed I remove the humidifier. My Baldwin upright (one of the last made by Baldwin USA) is tuned professionally once a year. The technician says he "almost" feels guilty for charging me since the piano stays in excellent tune. The only downside is that I have to manually fill the humidifier once a day through fall, winter and early spring. The technician has suggested this to his other clients, but so far no one else is doing so.
@@peter5.056if you invest in a humidifier on your furnace then you can control the amount of moisture in the air and adjust it so that your piano is happy. If your piano is happy then you will be happy and comfortable too.
@@Quince828 Ha, yes. I live in the sub-tropics, so I have the problem of high humidity.
I repair older electronic organs. I went to a customer who lived near the ocean. He explained what was occurring and he demonstrated the problem. I lifted the lid, looked inside and closed the lid. It was covered with verde grease. The PC boards where crumbling. The customer was very angry that I wouldn’t work on it. There was no point. It was a Thomas Triannon it was in such bad condition I was astounded that it played at all! It wasn’t even worth stripping it for parts. Moisture is cancer to any acoustic or electronic instrument. Dust collects on the PC boards or the strings, moisture gets is collecting in the dust an holding it there. Vacuum the dust out of the piano or use a hair dryer **ON COLD** to blow the dust of the piano and from the PC boards.
damp chaser eliminates humidity and dryness 🤷🏻♀️
It eliminates *excess* humidity and dryness.
One more tip - get a good quality digital piano. They never need to be tuned. Period.
In that case, you might as well look at paintings on your TV
I had both my digital pianos attacked by ants. So stressful🎹🎶