The soundboard is one of the most important parts of a piano. Soundboards have traditionally been made of thin planks of solid spruce, about 1/2 inch thick and the width of your hand, glued together on the edges to form a very large surface. While this traditional approach has been used throughout the history of […]
HEP Guy
You Must Have a Good Ear…
I’ve been told that I must have a good ear, usually by someone I’ve just met who has learned that I’m a piano technician, and I’ve always wondered exactly what it meant. Piano tuners do train themselves to hear components of piano tone, usually called partials or harmonics. These are pitches within pitches (the g […]
RPT Repeat
I finally did it. I passed the final technical tests to regain my RPT (Registered Piano Technician) status with the Piano Technicians Guild. If you haven’t been following my progress (what?? you haven’t??) go to this post for a refresher. The whole process was indeed an ordeal. While the bench tests were pretty much the […]
My Evolution as a Webmaster
I’ve had good teachers. I’ve always had a sense that no matter what I was involved in, there was always somebody better at it and something I didn’t know. In some activities you have to know when to balance this with the simple enjoyment of the activity, like piano playing. In other activities, like piano […]
The Myth of Artist Endorsements
It is common for piano manufacturers to tout a list of artists with whom they enjoy some sort of connection. Sometimes that connection is rather tenuous since that artist may have affiliations with more than one company and, frequently, they have been dead for a number of years. However, artist endorsements form a sort of […]
Cool Tools for Piano Technicians
A couple of cool tools for piano technology. Richard Davenport string tools and Great hammer spacing tool from B & K. Yes, I am holding it upside down.