How Humidity Impacts Your Piano - Does Your Piano Have Sticking Keys?
Your piano was a large investment. As an integral part of a regular maintenance routine by your piano technician, the Piano Life Saver System will help you protect it and ensure many years of trouble free playing and beautiful music. The Piano Life Saver System is a highly engineered, very low maintenance, humidity control system that fits right into your piano. It is designed to stabilize the moisture content of the wood in your piano ensuring pitch stability and increased longevity.
Pianos are largely made up of wood, felt, and metal. Extreme levels of humidity, high or low, or a fluctuating humidity level, will have detrimental effects on all of these materials both in the short and long term. Many manufacturers describe this as "abusive" in the wording of their warranties.
When humidity levels rise, wooden components absorb moisture from the air and will actually swell to the point that they are measurably larger. Of course, when the humidity level decreases, they will shrink. Have you ever noticed how the doors in your home stick during one time of year and during another the gaps between boards on your hardwood floors open up? Imagine this happening inside your piano. When your piano is repeatedly subjected to these cycles, the glue joints holding all of these pieces together can start to fail and major components like the soundboard can crack.
The piano will also be unstable in pitch. All pianos go out of tune and need to be tuned regularly. However, it is not possible to put a "fine tuning" on a piano that has strayed far from pitch. If the pitch varies and the technician needs to make a significant adjustment to it, several things will happen. First, and most instantly noticeable, will be an additional charge by your technician. Because he/she must do more work, they will have to charge you more. Secondly, the piano will incur more wear and tear and stress the farther it is from pitch every time it is tuned. And finally, the stability of the tuning will be reduced.
The hammers which strike the strings, initiating the sound, are made of felt. Felt is compressed wool fibers. We've all heard people complain how they're "having a bad hair day" due to high or low humidity. The wool fibers are no different. They will swell and shrink too. This can result in a lack of consistency in the tone of your piano.
The strings in your piano are made of steel, with the bass having a copper winding. If the humidity is too high, these will eventually rust, leading to expensive repairs.
Please be aware that your Piano Warranty is not covered if your humidity is over 70%.
The Dampp-Chaser System carries a Limited 5-Year Warranty & is approved by manufacturers such as Baldwin, Bachstein, Bluthner, Bosendorfer, Fazioli, Kawai, Mason & Hamlin, Pearl River, Petrof, Sauter, Schimmel, Seiler, Steingrauber & Yamaha.
Feel free to contact us to supply and install one today!
