How the QuicKey Leveler™ Key Leveling Tool & Method was Developed.

The Leveler Company story began when the owner, a mechanical engineer, craftsman and amateur piano player had the opportunity to obtain an upright vertical grand piano. The one hundred and four year old Kimball piano was essentially free for the taking from a family friend. Although the case and keys of the piano were in great need of repair, and the keys needed to be leveled, the piano still played. A local piano technician was called to see if the piano was worth fixing; the opinion rendered - “necessary only as a labor of love”.

Although the restoration didn’t make good financial sense, the piano symbolized the craftsman of years gone by. There was a beauty in the wood beneath the wear that not everyone could see and the full sound the piano made couldn’t be resisted and was rarely heard. Having an appreciation for all these things I decided to take on the majority of the restoration myself. The technician helped out by removing the action so that the hammers could be resurfaced and removing the keys so that they could be resurfaced. With some general guidance from the technician the rest of the restoration began. The piano’s case was broken down to the component level and stripped of its original shellac finish and sanded down to bare wood.

The inside was meticulously cleaned and covered so that the piano could be re-finished. After several weeks of consternation and careful labor, the piano was ready for re-assembly. The restored keys and action were put back into position and miraculously the piano played again. The keys however, were still badly in need of leveling. The tedious process of leveling the keys began. With a little instruction from the technician and some borrowed tools and punchings, twelve hours of work leveling the keys yielded fair results the keys were level. But a terrible realization had unfolded, leveling the keys had affected the action and the action needed adjusting. Adjusting the action displaced some of the keys back out of level and the keys needed to be re-leveled, again!

Looking back it was realized that perhaps too much adjustment was made when leveling the keys, but how would you know. Wouldn’t it be great if you could look at all of the key positions at one time so that you didn’t over adjust the key position and disrupt the action? There had to be a better, faster, and more accurate method of accomplishing this labor intensive process of key leveling. I research/ed the market and looked for key leveling tools that would make the job easier without success. So I set forth to create a better method of piano key leveling.

Drawing on experience as a machinist and engineer, and after several months of building multiple prototypes, developing the mathematical and software models, seeking advice from technical advisors the QuicKey Leveler™ method of piano key leveling was conceived. The Leveler Company was started to bring the QuicKey Leveler™ piano leveling tool to the market. On January 4th 2008 a patent application for the method was filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Mission Statement

The Leveler Company's mission is to use the latest technology available to provide high quality, reliable, time saving products to further the industries it serves.