Ken Chang Piano Service

647-708-3846

Your Piano

Quality pianos demand quality and utmost care.

Your piano is an investment that brings you and your family a lifetime of music and enjoyment. To ensure its performance over that lifetime, to preserve your instrument and to avoid costly repairs in the future, it is important to have your piano serviced regularly by a qualified professional.

As it takes some time for a new piano to fully settle in and adjust to its home's atmospheric conditions, proper tuning and servicing are especially important during the first year after purchase.
Remember that a concert piano is tuned before every performance, and a piano in a professional recording studio, where it is constantly used, is tuned three or four times each week. 

ATMOSPHERE

Your piano will perform best under consistent conditions, neither too wet nor too dry, at 20 degrees C and 42% relative humidity. Dryness causes the piano's pitch to go flat; moisture makes it go sharp.

Changes in temperature, humidity, or heavy use will require more frequent tunings. If a piano is not regularly tuned, it will be less stable.
It is difficult for a technician to hold-tune a neglected piano; sometimes, it is more costly to restore it to hold tune than if it had been kept under regular, constant care.
Unfortunately, no matter how expertly a piano is tuned, atmospheric variations and the nature of its construction constantly conspire to bring it out of tune.

PIANO TUNING

  A piano has approximately 220 to 230 strings, and Piano Tuning is the art of adjusting the tension of the strings to get the piano to produce a clear and perfect tone.

Shifting or moving the piano, humidity changes, and extraordinary playing can cause the piano to go out of tune. An untuned piano can become flat or sharp. To prevent all this from happening, it is advisable to have two or more thorough tunings in order to raise the piano pitch to the international standard.
Normally, home pianos need to be tuned at least once a year, but twice is recommended for better performance.
Tuning is an art practiced by skilled professionals, and under no circumstances should anyone other than a professional technician be allowed to tune your piano.

WHAT IS CONCERT PITCH?

A-440 is the international standard pitch and frequency at which all instruments are tuned. This means the "A" note above middle "C" is tuned to 440 cycles per minute or "A440". Always keep your piano in tune. It is specifically designed to be tuned to the international pitch standard of A440 cycles per second.

REPAIRS

After playing the piano periodically, the piano mechanism's felts tend to wear or compress.

Regulation is necessary to properly align the piano action, keyboard, and pedals, restoring it to its smooth, responsive performance. Overhauls and reconditioning are undertaken in a workshop, such as restringing the piano, repairing the action parts and refilling worn parts.
The oval-shaped piano hammer head is made up of layers of compressed wool to produce a full, rich and balanced tone. Over time and with wear, the hammer head becomes flattened and grooved at the tip, resulting in a metallic, brittle tone. Voicing is the process of altering the hammer heads to achieve an overall softer or brighter balance tone throughout the entire keyboard.