Services
Tuning
Standard - A440 (or custom pitch by request), equal temperament
Pitch Correction - a quick first pass preceding a standard tuning, used when a piano is especially out of tune. Important for tuning stability when a piano is more than 10 cents flat or sharp
Historical temperaments - Examples include Martin Agricola Just Pythagorean tuning, Pietro Aron Meantone temperament, Andreas Werkmeister Well temperament ("Werckmeister III")
Regulation
For a grand or upright, regulation is a series of increasingly fine adjustments to achieve even control of touch, across the keyboard, over the widest dynamic range.
Worn leather, compacted felt, and warped wood over time cause a piano to go out of regulation, distancing a pianist from a sense of consistent control over dynamics. A complete regulation will restore this control and reestablish even touch, up and down the keyboard.
Repair & Renewal
Routine ailments to major illnesses. Sticking keys, sluggish keys, dead keys. Broken hammer shanks, snapped strings, wayward action components. Buzzes, clicks, squeaks, rattles, knocks, thunks, zips, and zings, all found and attended to with a gentle, steady hand.
Restringing (individual or a complete set), new hammer installation, hammer reshaping, soundboard cleaning, action rebuilding, key bushing, damper replacement, humidity control system installation and service, keytop replacement, and more.
The delicate insertion of needles to piano hammer felt, at certain angles and at certain depths, influences various aspects of a piano’s tonal character. An overly bright piano can be warmed and mellowed, an undesirably dark piano enlivened, too-short sustain elongated, or attack made more pronounced through careful needling or the application of hardeners to a piano’s hammers. Inconsistency of tone, too, can be corrected with voicing. Perhaps you may be delighted by the colors your instrument produces, but that F# seems distractingly metallic next to its neighbors. Voicing can smooth out tonal anomalies in an otherwise pleasing piano.
Other voicing techniques include reshaping the hammers with sandpaper paddles, steam voicing, “voicing the room” by introducing or removing materials—usually rugs and drapery—to address a space’s influence over a piano’s personality, or even subtly controlled de-tuning to introduce motion into a note’s decay.