Hi to all you guys and gals on the pianotech lists. I've just joined from the UK. I've a question about Dampchaser climate control systems. The concept seems really risky to me. I have just started fitting them and have found that, in uprights especially, if the pads are not changed after the required six months then they get hard and black and they loose their ability to suck up the water. What then happens is that you now have a heating element doing the opposite of what it is meant to do. Instead of evaporating the water and increasing the humidity in the piano you end up with the humidity being lowered. If the piano is in a dry place then the heating element is blasting away trying to evaporate water that isn't there on the pads, even if the resevoir is full, the piano then gets very dry and deteriorates very quickly. In an ideal world the pads would be changed strictly at six month intervals and there wouldn't be a problem, but we all know that sometimes people decide not to tune their pianos for a while and then they might end up with quite a damaged piano even if they have been diligent in topping up the water! This is not just a hypothetical case, I have had this happen to me. The piano wasn't badly damaged but it had some very noticeable deterioration. Has anyone got any suggestions? Is there a better system of protecting pianos from very dry conditions that doesn't involve a room humidifier? Also people are always asking me the simple question; what is the best thing for cleaning dirty ivories. I always recommend a weak solution of water and washing up liquid. Has anyone got any better suggestions?
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