The piano tuner came by yesterday to, well, tune my piano. I'd told him I thought there was something wrong with the center pedal and asked if he could take a look at it.

The center pedal (called the sostenuto pedal), on most grand pianos (and many uprights) is supposed to allow you to have a note or a chord sustain while you go on to play other stuff. Basically, you hit a chord, step on the center pedal and the chord continues to ring. Unlike the sustaining pedal (the one on the far right), which would blur everything together if you were to hold it down while you played, the center pedal doesn't sustain any subsequent notes that are played. (The BBC has a succinct explanation of the three pedals here for those of you who are interested in learning more about this stuff, including the third pedal, the one all the way to the left, called the "una corda" pedal.)

My sostenuto pedal, however, was only working some of the time and for some of the notes. So after he finished tuning the strings, Mr. Piano Tuner Guy pulled my Chickering apart so he could get at the pedal mechanism. I pulled out my camera and took some photos. Click the photo above to take a look at all the piano guts. It's pretty neat!

Turns out the pedal wasn't connected quite right, which is why it wasn't working. (Duh. :) So he reconnected the pedal and now it works for most of the notes. Apparently it needs some more fine tuning, which might need to be done by the shop that sold me the piano. So Mr. Tuner Guy is going to call them and see whether they want to send someone out or if they want him to fix it or what.

The interesting thing about all this is, while he was looking over the instrument and after he'd tuned it, he asked what I'd paid for it. When I told him, he said he'd thought it would have been more than twice what I'd paid!! WOW! He says it's in really good shape and told me he thought the piano had probably been restrung at some point in the 1950s.

Hopefully I'll get the sostenuto pedal issue worked out fairly quickly... Plus, it was nice to see the piano tuner guy - he worked on my Mason & Hamlin way back when, so I've known him for about 5 years or so. He's really a nice guy and does tuning for people all over the city, including a lot of the music schools in the area and the local symphony. He really does an excellent job and my piano sounds wonderful now!! Wohoo!