Taylor 5565 Hygrometer

It is practically impossible to talk about pianos, piano tuning, and piano care without talking about the humidity.

A first step in understanding how humidity is effecting the piano is  knowing what the humidity is in the home or room where the piano is located.

An accurately calibrated Taylor 5565 Hygrometer/Thermometer will work just fine.   Its easy to see, and this Taylor 5565 has calibration ‘screws ‘ accessible from the back (see above photo), which can be used to calibrate both the hygrometer and thermometer using a sling psychrometer.

If you have one, just let me know when I am there, and I will be happy to check the calibration and adjust it for you while servicing your piano.

There are many vendors that carry this Taylor 5565 Hygrometer, and I am sure there are other good analog hygrometers out there that have the adjustment screws on the back.     Just make sure the one you buy can be calibrated, and is of reasonably high quality.

One of my customers has a wet bulb/dry bulb hygrometer hanging on his wall – also made by Taylor.   It needs water in it at all times, and in order to calculate the humidity, both dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures need to be noted and then used to calculate the humidity using the ‘tables’ on the front.  It might be a little more trouble, but it’s accurate.

I am not a big fan of most  ’digital’ hygrometers.

When we moved to Tucson a few years ago,  we brought 3 or 4  small digital hygrometers with us.  After leaving them right next to each other for a few days, they all read differently –   a 15 % – 20% difference between them!     There was no way to calibrate them.