Action
A complicated mechanism, made up of levers and balances, which transmits the physical movement of a player’s fingers from the keys to the hammers. An action can comprise up to 80 individual components!

Damper
A small, felt covered piece of wood which rests against the strings. Dampers are lifted from the strings when a key is struck, and returned when it is released. This stops their vibration, and silences each note.

Escapement
A mechanism that enables the hammer to ‘escape’ after a string has been struck, allowing the strings to vibrate freely.

Fallboard (or nameboard)
The hinged part of the piano case, which covers the keys. The maker’s name is usually inlaid, often in brass.

Hammer
A hammer is made of fine wool felt, formed around a wooden mould. In order to achieve the exact shape, many tons of pressure is applied from several different angles. For every note played a hammer must move five times as far, and four times as fast, as your finger!

Pinblock (or wrestplank)
A laminated or solid piece of wood, which holds the tuning pins in place. The pinblock must be strong enough to withstand the cumulative force of all of the strings pulling on the tuning pins, perhaps as much as 30 tons of tension.

Plate
A cast iron structure to which the strings are attached, which in turn is usually bolted to a cast iron frame. The stronger the back frame, the longer the piano will stay in tune.

Regulation
The process of adjusting the action of a piano, which may well be the most complex mechanical device in your home (more complex even than your car!). A piano will typically have more than 9,000 parts, about 4,500 of which are moving parts.

Soundboard
A large bowed, wooden surface over which the strings are stretched. The soundboard acts as a resonator, and is essential to the good tone of a piano.

String
A thin metal chord, made of steel of copper. In most instances, a hammer strikes three strings for each key that is played. The thicker the string, the more slowly it vibrates and so the lower the tone. Because of this increased thickness, there is only room for two strings per note at the bottom of the piano (and the very lowest notes have just one).

Tone
A sound of definite pitch, quality, volume and duration, as distinct from noise. A beautiful tone on the piano means a beautiful sound!

Tuning
The adjustment of the tension of the strings of a piano, in order to alter the pitch of each note and align the intervals between their tones.

Voicing
The hardening or softening of the hammer felts, in order to obtain a particular quality of tone and ensure that the tone of each note is uniform throughout.