I wish to pay tribute to the work done on our piano recently by Martin Stokes who spent a day with us to get our Yamaha U3 into tip top shape.

When we bought the piano a couple of years back we knew it had not had a full restoration by Yamaha themselves but assumed it had been serviced by the retailer to the proper level and certainly sounded the part when my son demo’d it at the dealer. As time went by, just the upper registers really started to grate a bit with me in our smaller room and whilst having a string replaced a few months back, the tech noticed some issues and told me the piano would benefit from “regulation” which is another word for servicing. So I just had the feeling that as a whole the piano wasn’t quite performing to its full potential.

There were basically four stages to Martin’s work. Firstly, a full tuning - this gives you a benchmark to start with, as close tuning will immediately improve things tonally. Second, the regulation where all the mechanical parts of the piano are checked and adjusted to where they should be. Of course you are looking for complete uniformity across the whole keyboard so touch and feel is correct. Thirdly is “voicing” where the tone of the piano can be adjusted to one’s liking. Martin knew what the issue with the upper registers was without me having to mention it. He spent considerable time very carefully shaving the felts of the hammers to soften them, resulting in a darker sound. What a skill to get this just right on each note!  Finally, the tuning is all checked and adjusted if necessary.

We now have an instrument that sounds utterly glorious from top to bottom and has never sounded better.  The overall resonance and presence of the sound is quite wonderful. Myself and son could not be happier.

www.stokesoflondon.co.uk/home-tuning/