What is piano Regulation?
What is piano regulation?
If you're shopping for a new piano, or if you're researching how to make your piano perform better, you may have come across the word "regulation" while perusing through different sites.
But, what is piano regulation exactly? What does it do?
In a nutshell,
“Piano regulation is a term used by piano tuners and technicians that refers to the calibration or intonation of the moving pieces in a piano. This includes the piano’s action, keyboard and dampers. Having a piano properly regulated will allow a piano to play at it’s best performance.
Piano regulation can also be used to change the way a piano’s keys feel to best suit the requests of the player.”
Just as a guitar needs to be “setup” or “intonated” by a luthier when it is fresh out of the box, or after several years of playing, a piano too needs special attention in order to play at its best.
All of the technical procedures that go into the regulation of upright and grand pianos are explained in great detail in these articles linked here by the Piano Technicians Guild, and Piano Tuning Matters.
In this article however, we’ll be going over the general concept of piano regulation and when it is necessary to perform.
A piano is composed of up 12,000 individual parts. Many of these parts are made from a combination of felt, wood and metal. As a piano is played and as it ages, the felt in the action and under the keyboard compresses, or becomes harder because of its age, and the wood often swells and contracts with changes in humidity.
As the dimensions of the wood pieces change, and the felt components compress or begin to break down due to age, it changes the way that the piano feels to the player. The piano will often begin to feel sluggish or heavy at the keys. Often, the hammers will “double strike” or “block” against the strings. It’s not uncommon for a player to sit at a piano that is far outside of it’s intended factory tolerances and write the piano off as no good.
Thankfully, in most cases, all of these problems can be solved with regulation.
If the piano is in relatively good shape, and none of its pieces need to be totally replaced due to age or damage, a piano technician can adjust all of the moving parts in the piano so that they are all within factory specifications. To perform this process properly, it will often take a technician anywhere from just a few hours to several hours to complete the process on either an upright or grand piano.
Do New Pianos Need To Be Regulated?
Absolutely.
A common misconception is that when pianos are brand new from the factory, they are in perfect playing condition. Unfortunately, this is not the case. With the exception of a few very high end builders, piano regulation is often just “roughed in” at the factory. This is due to a variety of reasons. When pianos are freshly built, they need a bit of time to season with the climate they are ultimately delivered to. The wooden components of the piano will swell and contract a bit at first before finally stabilizing. If you were to perform a fine regulation in the factory before the wood has had a chance to settle, the piano would be out of spec by the time it was delivered to the dealer, or shortly after it was uncrated for the showroom. The other reason is simply that regulation is a lengthy process. It’s not exactly cost effective for piano factories to allot an additional 8 hours of fine regulation after the piano leaves the assembly line. This fine regulation work is left to the responsibility of the dealer that sells the piano.
-Piano Buying Tip
As important as regulation is for a piano to play to its fullest potential, many piano dealers perform very little to no regulation to their pianos before they are sold and delivered to a customer's home. This is again is often due to the expense of a technician to do the work. If you are in the market for a piano either new or used, ask the salesperson if the piano has received a full regulation.
Should Used Pianos Be Regulated?
Definitely.
Even if a piano has been regulated once before in its life, it’s a good idea to have the piano checked out by a piano technician to conclude whether or not everything is within spec.
I personally have never purchased a piano from a private party to sell in my store that wasn’t in need of a full regulation. In many cases used pianos can play better than they did when they were new, due to never being properly regulated in the first place.
From the keyboard to the hammers, the piano is a very intricate and impressive machine. Having your piano regulated by a well trained piano technician can totally change the way you feel about your piano, unlocking the performance and potential that it may have been missing.