I recently started playing my Schubert upright piano again. I try to play it pretty softly so I don’t bother my neighbors. The problem is that it seems to be intrinsically loud compared to some other pianos I’ve tried. (That is, pushing a key with moderate force makes a pretty loud sound on my piano, whereas it would be softer on others.) An even bigger problem is that some keys don’t make a sound at all unless I press them pretty hard. These keys are pretty much all-or-nothing: either they play a loud note, or they don’t make a sound at all.
Are these problems that a piano tuner can fix? I’m also considering trading the piano in for a digital one that I can use with headphones, but I’d prefer not to take such a drastic step.
If you have keys that don’t play unless you bang on them, then you’re going to need a tech to look at the instrument in any case. Ask that person when they show up what else can be done, if anything. I’m no piano tech, but I wonder if the felt on the hammers could be worn and cause the volume on all the keys to be a bit unpredictable.
A $70 keyboard is not a replacement for a piano. Proper digital pianos start at $1000, you want some build quality and 88 weighted keys - otherwise playing any classical music on it is not going to make you happy. A cheap keyboard might be fine for some fiddling around, but it is going to feel and sound like crap.
Where did I even suggest it was a replacement for a piano? It’s cheap enough to just be bought as, more or less, a toy. But I suggested a full-size keyboard so at least there will be some transfer of practice skills from it to a real piano. The OP is clearly not interested in public performance if the main concern is a low enough volume not to disturb neighbors.
You can get excellent Yamaha digital pianos for as little as $500. I recently bought two as gifts, the P95and the YDP-S31. They both have 88 weighted keys and excellent sampled grand piano sound, as well as several other sounds. And they are MIDI keyboards, so can drive an external MIDI synthesizer or instrument.
Also, you should get a piano technician to look at your upright. He/she may be able to work on the action and even out the sound.
When my mother passed away, we had her piano tuned up before passing it along to our sister. The piano guy said that it had been tuned quieter by shifting the hammers on the keys that strike multiple strings such that they only strike one. He said that it was a pretty standard thing to do, at least at one time. He put everything back the way it was intended to be and I was surprised at how much louder it was.
A good tuner can voice the piano to play less loudly, or you could try hanging a heavy blanket over the back of the piano, and assuming this is a typical upright with deep spaces on the back, you might even try stuffing pillows into those spaces before hanging the blanket.
There are also sound deadening caster cups for pianos that reduce the amount of noise that gets transmitted through the floor to your neighbors’ ceiling.
One significant caveat to voicing is that it’s time consuming and pretty much permanent as the process involves softening the faces of all of the hammers.
Sorry, but saying “Get a $70 dollar keyboard instead of a piano technician” is like saying “Get a tricycle instead of having your car serviced”. They are not remotely comparable. Even if you’re not playing for an audience, most music styles cannot be played on a toy. It might be a nice thing to have, but it doesn’t really solve the OP’s problem.
I tis an older piano given it is an upright. When these were the rage, they were not made with weighted keyboard (weighted keyboards are designed so that each key pressed requires the same amount of force to be applied). Consequently, a nothing can be done about it. These pianos are also referred to as up-right grands which were designed to emit more sound than a spinet.
The solution to being to loud is: Purchase a new electric piano where you can control the sound level - these incidently come with weighted keyboards.
I, however, love these older uprights and it would break my heart to part with one.
Huh, I wasn’t aware of that. You can buy brand new uprights (example), so this isn’t necessarily an old one. Do new ones have the limitation you’re describing?
I also wonder if the OP meant “spinet” rather than “upright”.
Aha. I’d locked in on “upright” rather than “Schubert upright”. Not that that distinction would have meant much to me, but thanks for setting me straight.
This is just BS. I play, and I rehearse almost exclusively on those keyboards. They don’t sound as good (though Yamaha does better than Casio), and the keys are softer than some of the more harder-action pianos (meaning you don’t build up finger strength as well), but you can play anything on them you can play on anything else.
Those expensive uprights are all almost always a huge rippoff when it comes to what they actually can do. You can almost get as good of one in the $300 range if you don’t mind about the aesthetics. You’re paying more for that than anything else.
I honestly think of it like those gold-plated wires that audiophiles use. Everyone I know who gets a fancy keyboard doesn’t even use 1% of the features on them, which makes sense, since most of them aren’t for playing publicly.
Try playing some Chopin or Rachmaninov on a cheap keyboard. Oh, wait, not all the keys you need are there! I’m not sure about what you mean by “what they can actually do” and “features”. If you mean different sounds, digital pianos usually have 5-10 as opposed to the hundreds typically offered by even the cheapest keyboards. (However, those few usually sound better). It is all about the keys. Not just because of building finger strength, but because the weight allows way more control. This has absolutely zilch to do with gold plated contacts. Maybe we are actually talking about different types of instruments.
As for aesthetics, IMHO a piano is not only an instrument, but also a piece of furniture, so don’t dismiss looks and build quality out of hand too quickly.
UPDATE
I got something installed to make the piano quieter. It’s essentially a long metal bar with a long strip of felt that runs along the strings where the hammers hit them. The good news is that I can pull the bar up out of the way if I want the piano to play full volume. The bad news is that when it’s deployed, it makes the piano sound like crap. When I play certain chords, the felt must be transmitting some of the force to neighboring strings. In addition to hearing the real notes, I end up hearing notes that I’m not trying to play. My plan is to use the felt strip only in the late evening when I’m most concerned about not waking anybody up. The device cost about $85 or $90, and the piano tuner didn’t charge me for installation because he was so unimpressed with the quality of the product.
A friend I’ve done quite a bit of recording with in Vegas has an American made Baldwin Studio Upright. It’s a very intimidating piano. All the volume comes straight at you, so it’s hard to really dig in. It really wears out your ears. The default way to quiet a beast like that is to drape a piano moving blanket (any quilted moving pad will do) over the top so it covers the back and front down to the keyboard. This works quite well and is, of course, instantly reversible. It doesn’t look very good, but it makes the instrument much quieter.
An old neighbor of mine in a different building had an upright that lived up against a shared kitchen wall. When he rehearsed, it was quite loud. He was careful about his hours and stuck to daylight rehearsal times, but I did tell him it was like the piano was in the same room with me. He draped two big comforters over it, so they were between it and the shared wall and it made a huge difference. Don’t know how it sounded to him on the other side, but we were friendly neighbors for five years, talked enough that I cat-sat for him when he went out of town and he never asked if he could take the comforters off because they bothered him for rehearsing or anything.