At some point, you have probably sat down to play a nice-looking piano only to hear a dull “Thump Thump” sound with no sustain coming from the bass strings instead of a nice open tone. I like to call this kind of piano the Johnny Cash piano. I call it this because the bass section on these pianos can sound like the thud bass tone of his records. That is great for a bass tone but not exactly what we want from our lovely piano, right?
So what causes your piano to sound like this? This is usually caused by very old bass strings that have gotten corroded over the years from dirt and rust. Bass strings have a copper winding around the outside of them and these can get filled with all sorts of dirt and debris over the years causing the tone of the strings to become dull. The debris build-up on the strings causes the strings to be unable to vibrate properly and causes the unwanted “thud” tone. This usually occurs on pianos that are from the early 1900s but can occur on newer pianos. So what can be done to fix this problem?
Restoring the tone of the bass strings
There are a few methods to restoring the tone of the bass strings. One method is to “turn and roll” them. This involves lowering the tuning and removing each bass string one at a time from the bottom hitch pin of the piano and making a loop in the wire. The loop is then pulled tight and a scotch bright pad is inserted in the middle.
The pad makes it easy to run the loop up and down the wire to remove the debris in the winding. Since this is a dirty job, lots of newspapers are used to protect the piano from dirt. Usually when this job is completed my hands are black from coming into contact with the strings. When the strings are cleaned, it is then followed by a fine-tuning of the piano to stabilize the bass bridge because so much tension was removed.
In many cases, this method can restore around 75-90 percent of the tone to the strings and is generally cheaper than the other alternatives. This method takes about 2 hours and can be done at home during a piano tuning appointment.
Another method that some technicians use in areas where the air is contaminated with sulphur fumes is to remove all the base strings from the piano hose them down and spray them with oven cleaner. When the sulphur fumes react to the copper winding they become black and full of small deposits. Eventually, it makes the string unplayable. The oven spray helps remove those black deposits but must be washed off afterwards because it can be corrosive.
This method presents a few complications. First is removing the bass string coil from the tuning pin. This must be done with care as the coils on the old wire will be brittle. If broken they must be either replaced or spliced with new wire. Another issue with taking all of the bass strings off is that when put back on, the strings must be tuned several times before they settle back to their proper tension levels and are then properly tuned. All of this work means extra money to the customer. I do not subscribe to this method as the expense for the customer would be better spent on brand new bass strings.
But I also do not live in a high sulphur fume area. The last and best method guarantees that the bass section will sound as good or sometimes better than new. While pianos have not changed much over the last 100 years, string manufacturing has come a long way. Yes, the next method is to replace the old worn-out strings with brand-new shiny ones that are full of musical life. Sometimes the only option with some of these older pianos is to replace the old strings with new ones because turning and rolling the old ones would not make a difference.
They can be so worn that they just need replacing. The old bass strings are removed and sent to a string manufacturing company so that the strings can be duplicated. The new strings are then sent back and returned to the piano and redelivered to the customer. As with all new strings several tunings would be required because they are still settling. These newer strings will last many years if the piano is well taken care of.
Valley Piano Tuning and Repair Serving Huntsville, Madison, Athens, Decatur, Alabama and surrounding areas.
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