Piano Maintenance Service

Your Piano

Your piano is a marvelous instrument which can create the most heavenly note to uplift your senses.

From a simple melody to a thunderous fortissimo, or a tender tinkling pianissimo that rises to a heart-pounding crescendo – its complement of keys spanning 7 ¼ octaves are capable of an amazing range of natural notes played at varying tempos.

It does not look like a stringed instrument at a glance pulled to some 80 to 90 kg of tension.

The piano is made up of more than 10,000 parts, mainly of wood, felt and iron. Quality of materials and craftsmanship determine how rich and resonant the piano’s tone will be.

Maintaining Piano Performance

Regular maintenance is the best way to get your piano to perform at its peak. When properly maintained, your piano will sound bright and distinct. Besides, you will also feel good about playing it because the keys and pedals respond sensitively to your touch as you play the various intensities, tempos and movements of the music scores. That is how a well maintained piano should perform. To get the best out of your instruments, only qualified technicians should be called upon to service your piano.

At the Yamaha Technical Service Centre, we have the largest pool of highly skilled piano technicians in the country to serve the growing number of piano owners in Singapore.

Servicing for Wear & Tear

Regular playing affects the tension on the strings, causing the pitch to go “off” that is when a tuning is required.

The mechanical parts of your piano is subject to wear and tear. Repeated playing creates friction and wears off some of the internal parts of the keys’ action mechanism, causing them to go out of alignment which results in problems like uneven touch. When this happens, it is time to regulate your piano.

Regular playing will also affect the tonal quality of the piano as the hammerheads begin to flatten. That is when your piano will require filing and voicing to get back its rich piano tone.

So your piano needs regular servicing to maintain it in peak performing condition.

Tuning for Perfect Pitch

Tuning is an art and requires the specialized skills of trained personnel. Piano technicians are trained to adjust the tuning pins of each string until the right pitch is obtained.

When the tune is “out”, the piano sounds out of depth. Notes are either too high or too low on the musical scale and out of unison with each other. A tuning is needed to adjust each string back to its correct pitch.

As each home condition differs in ambience temperature and relative humidity, the piano will need time to adjust to its environment. Therefore a new piano needs about three tunings during the first year as the tension of the strings has yet stabilize. After the tension of the strings has stabilized, the piano would require a minimum of two tunings a year, depending on usage.

Regulating for Sensitivity

The piano action is a set of interrelated “levers”. Regulation could be described as the necessary adjustments that must be performed on those different “levers” in order to have the action work more responsively, smoothly and uniformly.

Constant playing creates friction which will wear off the felt and leather parts in the piano action. Similarly, expansion and contraction of wooden and metal parts because of humidity, temperature change will also cause the levers to be out of alignment. As result, the piano action will produce slower response than normal and will not perform as well as it did when new.

Voicing for Richer Tone

Every piano has its own tone quality or “voice” which can either be sweet, mellow, sharp or bright. Regular playing affects this voice.

Frequent playing will compact and dent the hammer felt. Subsequently this leads to hardened and grooved hammerheads resulting in a loss of resilience, thereby producing poor tonal quality.

Voicing is the treatment of the hammerheads to improve or adjust the piano tone. It is an intricate and highly specialised procedure of controlling the way the string vibrates by adjusting the density of the felt in each hammer, and to some degree, the shape of each hammer. This type of service requires care and expertise from the piano technician as one wrong application can damage the tonal quality of your piano.

For Best Piano Care

The best care you can give your piano is a regular service contract with a reputable piano technical service centre.

At the Yamaha Technical Service Centre, we have the best people whom you can trust to professionally maintain your piano. Besides the technical proficiency of skilled piano technicians, the quality of servicing is evidenced in the fact that we use original parts in the replacement of parts. This means that you are assured of precise, made-to-measure parts which are manufactured from carefully chosen material to ensure quality and reliability.

When to Call

Although only the piano technicians could determine the extent your piano needs tuning, regulation and voicing, you know things are amiss for your piano when:

  • The note sound dull or shrill
  • There are audible mechanical sounds when playing
  • The sound is not in harmony
  • The keys are slow to return to position, and sluggish

Then it is time to call in the trained piano technicians from our Technical Service Centre.

Piano Maintenance Service and Repair Hotline

To ensure your Piano is always in its tip-top condition. We provide full range of comprehensive Maintenance Packages and at competitive price to suit your individual needs.

  Piano Maintenance / Servicing Package Package Fee with GST (T&C Apply)
Upright Piano Tuning and Servicing package. from $257.00 (w/GST) (2 tunings & servicing / year)
Grand Piano Tuning and Servicing package. from $444.00 (w/GST) (2 tunings & servicing / year)

Just call our Piano Maintenance Service and Repair hotline at +65 6740 9262 or What’s App us at +65 8474 8684. Our service administrator will be glad to provide you with free consultation and no obligation advice on any piano maintenance issues or inquiries.

Alternatively, you may leave us a note at Contact Us (Maintenance Service and Repair). We will response to your inquiries within 3 working days.

New Online Payment for Maintenance package is available at https://shop.sg.yamaha.com/eservices/contract-payment/. Please get ready the Maintenance Contract or SMS notification message before proceed for payment.

Yamaha e-Services:
https://shop.sg.yamaha.com/eservices/contract-payment/

Terms and Conditions : Maintenance package is applicable for last tuning completed by Yamaha Technicians / Yamaha Authorized Technicians within 2 years. Otherwise, One-Off Tuning package of $207.00 (w/GST) for Upright Piano and $363.00 (w/GST) for Grand Piano is required.

Tips for Piano Owners

Here are some helpful tips for piano owners to enhance their piano’s performance.

Location
It is advisable not to place the piano near to the windows, door, kitchen, bathroom or against an outside wall as these are areas often of high relative humidity which will affect the quality of the piano. So your piano should be placed against an inside wall, leaving 10 – 15cm or 4 to 6 ins space from the wall. However, if there is no other alternative, at least make sure that the piano has adequate ventilation on all sides, and keep the piano heater on 24 hours.

Moving It
If you have to move your piano, the weight of the piano should be shifted to the rear castors. Call a qualified piano mover for major relocation.

Piano Top
Do not place heavy objects like vase, souvenirs etc., on top of the piano which may damage the piano or resonances from the objects. Water spilled over will leak into the piano which will cause costly damages.

Keyboard
Always play the piano with clean and dry hands. To prevent stickiness and stains, wipe the keys with a soft cloth. Avoid alcohol, thinner and other types of chemicals which can damage the keyboard. Call a piano technician to remove coins, paperclips or any small objects wedged between the keys as incorrect handling may damage some of the delicate parts inside the piano.

Temperature & Humidity
Avoid direct sunlight, extremely high fluctuation in relative humidity, and exposure of the internal parts of the piano to dust and grime. Ideal temperature ranges from 15 -25 degree celsius and relative humidity is high in Singapore, the piano heater has to be switched on round-the-clock to prevent excessive moisture from accumulating within the piano.


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