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Hi everyone,
I stumbled onto this site by accident. The folks that review this blog seem very knowledgeable, so I am wondering if any of you technicians out there can provide some advice. I teach a family of 4 delightful girls to play the piano, both classical training and improv/ear training and their parents just purchased a Yamaha upright model T118 from a dealer/distributor in the area. It had to be ordered as it has a walnut high-gloss finish (not sure if this has any bearing, but perhaps it was shipped a long distance) and is in a carpeted room placed against an inside wall, about 2 inches away.
A technician came after delivery and performed an adjustment before tuning it (he is coming back this week to tune). He seemed stumped and perplexed - checked the soundboard,etc. and found no obvious problems. The sustain pedal got adjusted quite a bit, which apparently did reduce the zinging. Now, the sustain pedal barely works, especially near the middle registers, which seemed odd to me, and mom says the ringing is better, but it's still pretty significant, both without the sustain depressed and with it depressed- this is beginning where there's no felt dampers inside (from the E 2 octaves above middle C up to the top).
The soft pedal works fine, and the middle pedal (on this model it's a practice pedal) works very well. It's a pretty nice feature. I recently bought a Boston baby grand and mine is a full sostenuto pedal. I only just realized that on uprights, the center pedal has varied functions.
Is this ringing normal for a new piano that has not been broken in? I've played a lot of pianos (mostly Yamaha uprights or grands) and have never heard one that rang (it's like a metallic zing, actually) so much in the upper registers. I advised them to keep working with the dealer until they're happy with the sound in all the registers. It seems like Yamaha has a good quality control program, and T118 is reputably a good piano - this one has a nice, full warm sound otherwise. I'm hoping it's just an adjustment issue, maybe with the action? To my untrained eye, the hammers all seem to be aligned correctly and striking the strings squarely.
Thanks for any inputs.
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