Do jack release, let-off, first. Regulation is balancing hammer travel with key travel. I start with a standard blow distance, 45mm. Any time blow changes, capstans must be adjusted. Next I set the key height. 3rd is let-off. Last is key dip and checking. The proof that hammer travel balances key travel is aftertouch, key travel after let-off, seen in a slight gap between the jack and the butt when the hammer is in check.
Lucy, your videos are all so helpful. Re-watched this one this morning, because it has been too long since I've spliced a wire and I have half-forgotten how to do it. :) Thank you so much for your generosity in sharing your knowledge!
Hi Lucy. I’m your biggest fan. However I feel sorry about not being able to react to most of your video’s. Also it’s not possible to save them because you set them as “for children”.
Great question. I should redo this video, because at this time I do use felt for the upper strings that do not have dampers. The felt I use is not the typical muting felt because I find it too thick. Instead, I use medium thickness action felt. It comes one inch wide and I cut it in half with a rotary cutter. For most pianos that I tune, I use the papp mute where there are dampers because there is no way to injure the damper felt with the papp mute. If the papp mute doesn't fit between the hammers and the dampers, I make very tidy and small loops with the action cloth strip mute and without touching the damper felt (pull damper as far from the strings as possible) I push the felt down to be even with the top of the damper. When pulling the mute out, I hold down the 2 keys to raise the dampers from the strings and very carefully pull the mute out.
Thanks for this really helpful video Lucy. It helped me diagnose a loose hammer on my century old upright. After watching the video I ordered the two tools and was able to remove and reglue the affected hammer 😊
I’ve never tried that, so I don’t know. I got several new tuning customers because they were so upset about the dust their previous technician got all over their house. As a group they were so upset that I said I would never use air to blow dust.
Lucy- How much do you want to back the old tuning out before you tighten the new coil onto it? I learned to do this "the old fashioned way", without a dummy pin, where we back the old pin out 7 half turns (3&1/2 full turns). I want to learn how to do this the way you're doing also.
I found that if you are dumping an old fridge, take the rubber seals off and you should be able to extract the door magnet which is approximately 1/8” and it will hold on to the strings to let you set the let-offs!
That is a good idea. The more ideas the better. One thing nice about this technique is being able to vary the letoff distance. If a mute strip is used, the letoff needs to be more than 1/8. In pianos that have a tendency to hammer “bobble” I have hammers letoff slightly farther from the strings in order to have that slight bit more aftertouch. Thanks for your comment!
Thank you for sharing your process, when I use a strip mute I find using tweezers speeds up installing the mute for me. The papp’s mute is the second thing I get out of my case, but I dislike it being my primary mute when tuning the treble because I always get crossed up when I have to move the mute. I imagine for you that you need to move through each instrument as efficiently as possible so speed is the thing. I don’t think I would enjoy that as much, I love sitting down with a new (to me) instrument and taking a few hours, cleaning the interior, fixing squeaks and sticking parts, correcting the pitch (I do it so much 😂) But thank you and a shout out to Woody from EKU who first introduced me to piano technology and service.
Hello from Greenland, For the notes in the middle with three strings and only mute with the long stripe, if i understand correctely, the unisson is tuned with three strings for the right string correct, as you don’t use extra mute to mute again the left string? After all this process do you do another fin tuning, checking separately the unissons. It will take one week with helicopter anf flights to make a prof. Tuner to come here in our village 😢, so i try to understand how to make my first piano tuning. This video helps a lot as it is very clear, step by step. Is it possible to ask you some online guiding through skype?
