Piano Manual: Buying, problem-solving, care, repair and tuning

This book represents an interesting approach to producing a technical book about the piano.The market for piano technical books has always tended to be rather a small, "niche" market. TNot being 'mass-market' publications, piano technology books have never been produced in large anough numbers to make for 'economy of scale' so they have not been in colour. Arthur Reblitz's excellent technical text, for example, superb for students of piano technology, is black and white throughout. Black and white photos are OK, but it can be hard to see parts very clearly when everything is in shades of grey, whereas red and green felt parts on light wood stand out clearly in colour photos.The great thing here, is that Haynes Manuals are aimed at a broader market. By producing a book that will be useful for all piano owners, as well as those with a distinct and deeper technical interest, it has been possible to produce a work that is in full colour throughout. This is a tremendous boon!Many of us are familiar with the Haynes Manuals, and may have bought them for cars we owned. They are very thorough. For most, there is more information than would be needed. I was never going to pull an engine out and strip down the gearbox! But even finding out how to remove a piece of trim as as to access some component, would often justify the cost of the manual.In recent years, the Haynes company has branched out into other technical manuals, covering household appliances such as washing machines. And now, the Piano Manual!John Bishop is a practising piano technician of some 30 years experience and has a background as a University Lecturer (in an unrelated field). He and his writing colleague Graham Barker have produced a work that is copiously illustrated with photos, and is accessibly and humourously written.There are different methods for carrying out many piano tasks, and not everyone will do things in exactly the same ways as described in this book.. But that's fine. This is a genuinely useful Manual which I think should be in the hands of anyone who is at all interested in the workings of his or her piano. It would be especially good for piano students.Just as with the Haynes car Manuals, many tasks are described that most readers won't be intending to tackle, but the book is very much worth having for general background information. And it may embolden the reader to carry out some simple piano task, like fixing a loose grand piano pedal trapwork, successfully.There is an unfortunate error in the labeling of some parts in a photo of the upright piano action, due to a proofreading oversight, and this will presumably be corrected in future print runs. A corrected version is available in the Blog about the manual.As a piano tuner and technician of some 35 years, I am very happy to have this book as an addition to my piano library.

This book is a really great resource if you're fascinated by pianos and interested in learning more about how they work, what to look out for when choosing a new piano, etc. The style, layout and pictures are really great - although I would have given 5 stars if the photos had captions - it's not always clear what you're look at! If you know nothing about pianos (other than playing) then I'm not sure you would be able to carry out any repairs yourself just from reading this book, but it certainly goes a long way to helping you understand what issues might be.

Fantastic book. I was completely new to pianos and bought a 100 year old but fundamentally sound piano as a retirement project. With the aid of this book I have restored a formerly untunable scruffy old piano into a beautiful working antique piano that is tuned and playable at very little cost. This book tells you how to fix, repair and adjust all the component parts of a piano. In my opinion in addition to it's value as a piano manual it is a very good read and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in pianos. Extremely well written it is enriched with anecdotes, I thoroughly enjoyed the experiences recounted from decades of being occupied in tuning and repairing pianos in both the professional music world and the domestic piano environment. I was interested in pianos but knew nothing of them, this book was a great read and I gained serious piano knowledge and reading enjoyment from it. My piano is straight strung and overdamped and now I've fixed it I'm learning to play it!

Had a small problem with "sticking" of jacks on my piano. Wrote to author sending photo.........Not only was he generous with help & advice, but also was able to supply me with a set of small replacement springs for the piano at modest cost. A pleasant experience, 100% recommended.

Not sure that it equips me to tune a piano but very interesting if you want to know more about what goes on inside. I had two problems with my grand piano which my piano tuner fixed easily which were not covered by the book. One was squeeky keys - just fold the hammers back and lightly rub the leathers with your finger. The other was a sticky key which was caused by a stiff hinge pin.Overall well worth buying, it's like the car manuals - even if you don't fix your own car it's nice to understand what the technicians are talking about and gives you more confidence that you are not being ripped off.

Great book! very informative. I even bought the tuning kit and had a go like it says in the book!, but it's MUCH harder than it looks and you can quite easily and very quickly make things 100 times worse! So, although I enjoyed browsing through this book, I must recommend leaving the tuning to the professionals. But I still love the book :-)

Great lots of useful information

the book was so easy to understand. the index was easy to look up what i needed. very helpful i will be keeping this book safe for my own piano repairs. no more expensive bills for piano repairs.