As your piano tuner Wilmington DE, I am often asked, “Why should a piano owner bother to tune the piano?” There are several reasons, some concerning the preservation of the instrument, and some concerning the ear of the owner or owner’s family members. One of our previous articles discussed the importance of tuning for the ear of the child learning to play piano. The next article discussed the stress to the strings that results from restoring the tension to strings that have not been tuned in more than one year. The last article began the explanation of the stress to the piano soundboard, by explaining how fragile a soundboard is. If you have not read these articles, this would be a good time to read them before continuing with this article.
Our last article explained the construction process for making a soundboard. It is made of spruce, which is a soft wood, and it is only 3/8″ thick. In addition, it is constructed under thousands of pounds of pressure. Once in the piano, it is subject to accumulated pressure of about 500 pounds from the piano strings. It is designed to accommodate this pressure for years, when the pressure is distributed evenly on a tuned piano. All that gets thrown out the window when a piano goes out of tune.
When a piano goes seriously out of tune, the pressure does not drop evenly. The bass section tends to maintain its tension much more than the middle and treble sections. As a result, the relatively fragile soundboard is subject to tensions for which it is not designed. If a soundboard needs to be repaired or replaced, the investment is typically thousands of dollars. It is worth the simple investment to keep the piano tuned regularly, rather than do expensive repairs.
If you have any questions about pianos, please let us know. Kenneth Keith Piano Services is your Wilmington DE piano tuning experts. We also provide professional piano tuning Philadelphia, Eastern Shore MD and Southern NJ.
