Tuning Gone Bad: The Outcome

[Farrell]

>, how do you keep the salty air from 
> contaminating the metal piano parts . Is this a problem in your area and if 
> so,  how do you approach that problem.

I don't run into much of any problem related to salt. I have seen maybe a couple pianos in homes right on the water where it was indeed evident of advanced corrosion, but like I say, I can only think of two I have seen. I know people who live by the water that own cars and park them outside often have some problems with rust, but it seems not too much in the home. And I do service several dozen pianos that are in homes right on the water and no problem with them.

Humidity is a bigger factor. I tuned a 10 year old Young Chang 157cm grand this morning. It's 90 degrees outside and probably 90% relative humidity. The lady had every window open in the home. Nice breeze, a little hot, BUT THE PIANO - all the plain wires were totally rusted - got a nice tick tuning each string as I broke it free of being corroded to the agraffe. Half the bass strings were dead and tubby. Soundboard had a nice dead area in the killer octave region. What a way to ruin a piano in only ten years. Too bad.

I talked with her a bit about humidity control - but then I wondered - does she really want to spend $300 or so bucks on a dehumidification system on a piano that is all ready shot? Oh well, whatever.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Bigeartb@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: Tuning Gone Bad: The Outcome


> Terry,
>      As you already know, humidity changes can cause pianos to do some real 
> strange things. A church recently took their Baldwin Hamilton Studio piano 
> from their air conditioned church and placed it in the hot sun on an outside 
> stage. I tuned the piano continuous times and the pitch was changing as fast 
> as I could tune and when I finally gave up it was still changing. The bad 
> thing was no body else knew the pitch was changing. The music director and 
> congregation thought it sounded "real good". 
> I suspect the problem was some strange humidity problem.
>      Also since you are a Florida boy....I have just returned from a 
> wonderful time at Orange Beach, Florida in a condo on the beach.  I was 
> wondering as I enjoyed that ocean breeze, how do you keep the salty air from 
> contaminating the metal piano parts . Is this a problem in your area and if 
> so,  how do you approach that problem.
> Tommy Black
> Decatur, Ala.