WEIGHT, ACTION, STIFFNESS. Tough piano!

[allemande]

Good day everyone!

Well I’m having some small issues concerning a recent adjustment I made on my piano. You see, for a while now I’ve noticed that every time I go and play at the pianos at the conservatory where I study, or someone’s house, a small concert room, etc, I’m confronted with the terrible inconvenience in feeling that the piano is “heavy”, or “stiff” and quite frankly, a lot harder to maintain control over what I’m playing when half of the notes I play don’t come out right.

Because of this I decided that perhaps the best thing to do not only to try to overcome this problem, but to help me out in the long run, is to add more weight to the keys.
Now, I’ve been reading quite a lot of threads and articles concerning “action”, “stiffness” “geometry”, “sensitivity”, “weight”, and although one would assume these are self-explanatory terms, the more I read the less I understand exactly what all these terms mean. Also, I apologize to anyone if I use these terms in a confusing manner, I’m just not entirely sure each one is.

Moving on…So the thing is that I called up my piano technician and he came and he took my keys to place more weight on them. According to him, there was a weight of about 50grams per key on my keys, which is very light, and in comparison to Steinways, kawais, or Yamahas, which have an average of about 65-75 for the Japanese pianos, and 75-85 grams per key for the steinways (I believe he said this), we decided to take a long shot and place 90grams per key on my keyboard so I would have a fairly “heavy” piano for study, and when I’d have to go and play on another piano I’d feel it very light and manageable.

He returned with a 40gr lead weight placed on the back part of all my keys, placed all the keys on piano, and that’s that. He literally added more weight to my keys.
Now the thing is that after a couple days of playing and studying with my “new” piano, not only do I find it a lot heavier, but the main thing is that I feel it’s a lot harder to keep a key depressed than to press it down. To say it in other words, I feel more weight pushing the key upwards than resistance to when I push the key downwards. I’m sure if this is normal? If there is some adjusting needed? Or…if I just need work up more strength in my fingers to get used to the keys.

Basically this, for some reason I have a hunch that he didn’t do a very good job, and would like to hear an opinion from someone who really knows about this, if there’s more to be done, if it’s okay…whatever opinion is well accepted. I’m just really worried because it’s hard to play on my piano now, and having to maintain 2 or 3 voices in a bach fugue is almost impossible since I can barely keep the keys pressed down.   

[daniloperusina]

90gr downweight sounds like extremely much, and it could even be a bit dangerous for your hands.

Pianos can feel more or less heavy to play, wrongly or rightly, but what's considered standard is 50gr to make the key start moving down, and the upward force of the key 20gr. This is measured with the dampers "off", ie while pressing down the right pedal. Both of these figures can be more or less and the instrument might still feel nice to play.

There are more issues, however, that can make a piano feel easy or stiff, for example: the dampers should start lifting when key is depressed halfway. If too early, it will feel heavy; if too late, it will feel too easy. Another thing is that the hammers should come quite close to the strings before being "let off", like 1-3mm. Again, if they don't come close enough, it will feel heavy to play, and pianissimo will be very difficult.

You can easily check these things yourself when you get to these instruments next time. Find out what different coins weigh in your country, make the appropriate math and get, say, 20gr, 25gr, 30gr etc upwards and check downweight and upweight with pedal down and coins placed at the tip of the key. Also check if dampers start moving at roughly half key down. Check if hammers are resting at ca 47mm from strings. Check that hammer get very close to strings when pressing key down very slowly.

This way you can better judge if your technique is poor, or if the instruments are in poor condition.

Action: a series of levers which transfers the movement of the key to the movement of the hammer; ie when you press the key, the action throws the hammer upwards, or forwards (in an upright).

Geometry: how much movement of the key corresponding to how much movement of the hammer; ie the typical geometry is 5:1, meaning that when the tip of the key moves 10mm down, the hammer moves 50mm up.

Stiffness: caused by excessive friction or excessive weight. There are lot's of pin/bushings active during the pressing down of a key, and it's a delicate process to get just the right amount of friction everywhere so that the key/action/hammer/damper are neither wobbly nor stiff.
A typical weight issue in an upright is a too tight damper spring.
On both a grand and an upright, the weight of the action/hammer mutliplied with the length of the key (the key is actually a long lever) usually means that at the tip of the key the action/hammer will weigh a lot more than the 'optimal' 50 grams, so lead is inserted to compensate. Wrongful or inadequate compensation can cause excessive weight.

I hope I'm being of some help here!
good luck!