Services offered:
Tuning:
Tuning is the process of making fine adjustments to the tension of your piano's wire strings, bringing the notes to their correct pitch. Seasonal humidity changes cause the wood in your piano to expand and contract, altering the tension of the wires and causing the pitch to drift. Regular tuning corrects this pitch-drift and keeps the piano from getting too far out of tune. In western Washington, one tuning a year is usually sufficient. (Pianos on the east coast may demand two or three tunings a year!) The further the pitch drifts, the more work is required to correct it. In these cases, a pitch raise is required, which is a quick, approximate tuning, followed by a fine tuning.
Basic tuning: $180
Tuning and Pitch Raise: $270
Cleaning:
Pianos are DIRTY! They accumulate decades worth of dust and debris. You don't know where that used piano has been! Cleaning the outside of your piano is relatively simple, but the inside is full of delicate parts that can be easily damaged, and it is best to have it cleaned by a professional techician. I have tools and techniques to gently clean parts of your piano that seem impossible to reach.
Basic cleaning (grand piano): $150
Basic cleaning (upright piano): $120
Basic cleaning (spinet piano): $180
Service call: $100
Sticking keys, creaking pedals, oinking dampers, cheating jacks, sluggish hammers, notes that just don't sound right, etc etc etc. With 10,000 to 12,000 parts, there is a lot that can go wrong with a piano. Many of these problems can be diagnosed and corrected quickly and easily. This is a minimum fee, for up to one hour of work, and some problems will be beyond the scope of a simple service call. In these cases, an estimate will be given.
Regulation: approximately $1000-$3000
To the player, regulation is experienced as the "feel" of the keys. A skilled player will notice a piano that is out of regulation, but a novice or a child will not know what a well-regulated piano is supposed to feel like. When difficulties arise, they will blame themselves, though poor regulation is likely to be a major factor.
When you press a piano key, a hammer strikes a string and you hear a note. It happens so quickly that you might not realize there is a complex mechanical device (called the "action") between each key and each hammer. A standard piano has 88 notes. On an upright piano, there are 27 different adjustments that can be made to the action ON EACH NOTE. On a grand, it's 45. With normal home use, a piano will be due for regulation in roughly 20 years. As the moving parts wear, some develop too much friction, some develop too little, hammer tips become grooved by the strings and need to be reshaped, bits of leather and felt become compressed, and the piano will begin to lack the power and control it once had. Regulation remedies this multitude of problems. Like tuning, the longer regulation is neglected, the more work it takes.
Music is my lifelong passion. There is nothing more fun, and there is no better way to make friends. The pursuit of music holds endless lessons for us, individually and collectively. I have been working as a freelance musician and handyman for two decades, and in 2016 I combined those two endeavors and began tuning pianos for myself and my friends. I am a member of the Piano Technicians Guild, through which I have studied closely with several established local technicians.
I love working on pianos and I look forward to meeting you and your piano!
-Francis Brennan, piano technician