Your Piano Pedal Squeaks. Put The WD-40 Down.

If the can is already in your hand, set it on the floor and back away from the piano.

Every contact point in a pedalPedalA device on the piano operated by the feet. The right pedal (Damper/Sustain) lifts all dampers, allowing strings to vibrate freely. The left (Una Corda) softens the tone. The middle (Sostenuto) sustains only selected notes.The Savvy Take: Foot technique is as important as finger technique. Don’t just stomp it down. “Flutter pedaling” (rapid, shallow movements) can clear out the mud while keeping the sound warm. Pedal with your ears, not your foot.View in glossary → mechanism is leather or felt. Spray oil into those and they soak it up and glaze harder than they were before you started. Aerosol under a grand keybed doesn't stay under the keybed either. It drifts up onto the keybed itself and into the cloth key bushings, and the oil residue gets into the case finish, where it surfaces years later as fisheye craters the first time anybody tries to put a coat on it. The carrier evaporates inside a few weeks and leaves a tacky film that collects dust, so you buy a quiet pedal until about Thanksgiving and a gritty one after.

For what the same can does once it reaches the action, read the technicians arguing it out on the Piano Technicians Guild's member forum, WD-40 damage. Paul McCloud, RPT, who has worked on several actions that got the treatment, answering a technician who'd inherited a sprayed Baldwin M: "WD40 has ruined the action, and turned the wood into mush." Wim Blees, on the same thread: "There is no cure or solvent for WD40." Steven Rosenthal, RPT, on the cost of cleaning them: "There are 704 felt bushings in the action."

The good news is that a squeak is one of the cheapest noises a piano makes. Most of them are a dry contact point your technician quiets in four minutes during a visit you were going to book anyway. Set your expectations accordingly: of the eight causes below, one is a job you finish with your own hands, and it's number 7. The other seven you diagnose and hand over. Diagnosing is still worth twenty minutes of your evening, because it's the difference between a free add-on to a $175 tuning and a separate call-out.

You can do the whole diagnosis with a flashlight and a helper, and no tools.

Step one: upright trapwork or grand lyre

The two designs share almost no parts here.

An upright's chain runs pedal, then a threaded metal rod with adjustment nuts, then a wooden trap lever running to the side of the case, then a wooden dowel up to the damper lever. All of it sits in the bottom of the case behind the lower panel.

A grand's chain runs through the lyre: pedal box, lyre posts, two backstays at roughly 45 degrees, vertical pedal rods rising through felt-lined guide holes in the keybed, trapwork levers, then a wooden dowel called the pitman pushing up on the damper lift tray.

Get the lower panel off an upright. It lifts off a spring catch or a pair of clips. The bottom board can stay where it is, screwed down, because you don't need it out to see the trapwork.

On a grand, get your head under the keybed with a light. When I take a squeak call that's where my first two minutes go, while the owner works the pedal by hand at about an inch a minute. Slow is the whole trick. A squeak that vanishes at playing speed will sing when the pedal moves a quarter inch at a time.

1. A glazed buckskin cushion (start here)

Everywhere a rod end, a dowel, or a lever bears on wood or metal, the factory put a pad of buckskin or felt. Those pads compress and harden with use and take on a shiny glaze. A glazed pad stops sliding and starts grabbing and releasing, and that stick-slip cycle is your squeak.

How to tell: it's perfectly repeatable. Same point in the stroke every time, worse the slower you move, and it doesn't change when you play keys. Press the pedal by hand and you can usually feel the catch come up through the pedal.

Cost: normally absorbed into a service visit. Willey Piano Tuning in Renton WA includes up to a half hour of extra work in its $240 tuning; Little Orchestra Piano Tuning and Repair in Portland includes inspection and minorMinorReferring to a scale or chord containing a minor third. Often associated with sadness, darkness, or tension.The Savvy Take: Minor isn’t just “sad.” It can be angry, mysterious, exotic, or serious. The Natural Minor sounds ancient; the Harmonic Minor sounds exotic/classical; the Melodic Minor sounds jazzy/smooth.View in glossary → repairs in its $175. A pad worn through instead of glazed gets replaced, and Little Orchestra prices general shopwork at $100 an hour plus parts.

2. A dry fulcrum pin in the pedal box

On a grand the pedal is a lever pivoting on a metal fulcrum pin inside the pedal box, running in a wooden hole lined with bushing cloth. On an upright the pedal pivots on a metal pin at the front of the case. Dry cloth or a corroded pin gives you metal squealing on wood.

How to tell: the noise is loudest right at the pedal and doesn't get louder when you listen up at the keybed. Now push the pedal sideways with your foot. If it swingsSwingA rhythmic feel in which paired eighth notes are played unevenly — long-short, leaning toward a triplet subdivision — rather than straight.The Savvy Take: Don't do the math; do the listening. Swing is a feel with a dial, not a formula — lock your comping into a great ride-cymbal pattern (or a Basie record) and your hands will find the ratio your ears already know.View in glossary → left and right more than a hair, you have a worn bushing, and lubricant will buy you about a week.

3. Grand only: the pedal rod guide holes in the keybed

The vertical rods pass up through felt-lined holes in the underside of the keybed. Worn guide felt or a corroded rod surface makes the rod chirp mid-travel. An upright has nothing equivalent, because its rods run in open air.

How to tell: the noise is up at the keybed rather than down at your foot, and it happens in the middle of the stroke. With a flashlight you can watch which of the two or three rods is moving when it chirps. If the rod visibly rocks in its hole, the felt is worn.

4. Grand only: the pitman dowel

The sustain rod drives a trapwork lever that pushes a small wooden dowel, the pitman, up against the damper lift tray through a felt washer or rubber grommet. A dry well squeaks. A missing washer puts bare wood on bare metal.

How to tell: right pedal only, and the noise comes from inside the case near the middle of the piano. A squeak through the whole stroke is a dry well. A knock at the top of the stroke is a missing washer. This one's technician work, because the pitman can pop out of its well entirely if it's disturbed wrong.

5. Upright only: missing felt bushers on the dowel

Steve's Piano Service, chapter 46, puts it plainly: wood against metal in upright trapwork clacks, and the cure is felt bushings and washers at both rod ends and a felt lining where the dowels meet at the keybed. Some pianos, mostly recent imports, were built with a nylon or rubber grommet at the top of the rod, and Steve's line on those is that you shouldn't try to get by without it.

How to tell: with the lower panel off, watch while someone pedals. A missing washer is visible as bare wood touching bare metal, and it usually sounds like a click or a rattle mixed into the squeak.

6. The damper underlevers and the Protek CLP test

The pedal only starts the motion. If the dry joint is at the far end, in the damper underlever flanges or the damper guide rail bushings, the pedal takes the blame for a joint three feet away.

How to tell: location and pitchPitchThe perceived highness or lowness of a sound, determined by the frequency of vibration.The Savvy Take: Most people have “Relative Pitch” (recognizing intervals), not “Perfect Pitch.” And that’s fine! Relative pitch is actually more useful for understanding harmony and structure.View in glossary →. It comes from up in the case at string level, and it's a fine high chirp where a pedal joint gives you a low creak. Test it with the pedal untouched. On an upright, reach in and push a damper lever up with one finger. Same chirp, no pedal? The pedal is innocent. Technicians treat this with Protek CLP applied by needle, and the 4 oz bottle is $14.50 at Howard Piano Industries. The labor is what you pay for, because the action has to come out.

7. Loose lyre braces (the one you fix yourself)

Grab the lyre with your hand and rock it. If the whole assembly moves, or if the creak changes pitch when a second person steadies the lyre while you pedal, the mounting screws or the backstay bolts have loosened. Snug them and you're done, for free.

If a screw spins without ever tightening, stop turning it. The hole is stripped, and the fix is filling it with thin wood slivers and carpenter's glue, then leaving it 24 hours before re-screwing. Cranking harder chews the hole wider. The lyre is the most fragile assembly on a grand apart from the music desk.

8. Una corda only: the keyframe glide bolts

The una cordaUna CordaThe “Soft Pedal” (the left pedal). On a grand piano, pressing it shifts the entire action slightly to the right so the hammers strike two of the three strings (on the earliest pianos, literally one string — una corda) with a softer, less-grooved part of the felt.The Savvy Take: Don’t treat this just as a “volume knob.” It changes the color of the sound to be more muffled and ethereal. Use it for atmosphere, not just when you see a piano dynamic marking.View in glossary → pedal shifts the entire action and keyframe sideways so the hammers strike two strings instead of three. The keyframe rides on brass glide bolts bearing on the keybed, with the front and back rails riding on keybed cloth. When those surfaces dry out, the whole action stick-slips its way across.

How to tell: left pedal only, noise directly under the keys, and you can often feel the action shudder instead of glide. If the sustain and sostenuto pedalsSostenuto PedalThe middle pedal on a grand piano: it sustains only the notes already held down at the moment it's pressed, leaving all other notes unaffected.The Savvy Take: The most misunderstood pedal on the instrument — and on many uprights it isn't a sostenuto at all, just a practice mute or bass sustain. Use the real thing for pedal points: catch a deep bass note, then play dry chords above it. Debussy will thank you.View in glossary → are quiet, stop looking at the lyre. The correct treatment is dry graphite or Teflon powder, never a liquid, and it needs the action pulled out of the piano.

What NOT To Do (The Danger Zone)

Every item on this list came from a technician cleaning up after it.

- No oil. None. 3-in-1, sewing machine oil, mineral oil, motor oil, cooking oil. Steve's Piano Service puts it flatly: "Never use oil to lubricate anything on a piano." Oil soaks into felt and leather, swells them, glazes them, and migrates. Oil that reaches the tuning pins costs your piano its ability to hold a tuning, which turnsTurnAn ornament consisting of four notes: the note above, the main note, the note below, and the main note again.The Savvy Take: A Turn is like drawing a circle around a note. It decorates the pitch. Don’t rush it so much that it sounds like a glitch; it should be a graceful curl.View in glossary → a four-minute repair into a repinning job. Related reading on why that matters: why pianos are never in tune. - No petroleum jelly. It stays put, collects dust, and becomes an abrasive paste inside a bushing. - No aerosol silicone. Technicians who use it on metal points do it with the action out of the piano and paper down to catch overspray. Silicone contamination is the classic cause of fisheye, where a future finish coat crawls into craters and won't level. It can't be washed off, only sealed under shellac, and a refinisher will charge you extra for the privilege of dealing with it. - Never spray upward from under the piano. Gravity brings it straight back down onto the keybed, into the key bushings, and onto the damper felt. - Don't turn the pedal adjustment nuts. On an upright those nuts set how far the dampers travel. Over-tighten them and the dampers never fully return to the strings, every note sustains a little, the damper felt wears grooves, and the piano goes muddy in a way nobody traces back to the pedal. - Don't unbolt a grand lyre to get at it. Not without supporting it and disconnecting the pedal rods first. It comes down under its own weight and takes the rods and often the pedal box joints with it. - Don't tip an upright over. They're top-heavy at the plate and they injure people. Panel off, same as a technician does it. - Don't dump powdered graphite into a joint. It belongs rubbed sparingly into leather and felt contact points. Poured into a bushing it packs solid and gets tracked into your carpet.

And one rule that covers all of the above: never lubricate a joint that's loose rather than dry. Worn pins and loose lyre braces go quiet for a few days and come back, and every re-application drives more contaminant into wood that will need re-bushing eventually. A squeak that returns within a week of correct lubrication is a worn part, and it will keep saying so until somebody replaces it.

What the call costs: $75 to $100 an hour plus parts

Causes 4, 6, and 8 need the action or the lyre out of the piano. That's bench work: Little Orchestra in Portland publishes $100 an hour plus parts, Willey in Renton about $75. Causes 1, 2, 3, and 5 are usually free, because a technician who's already there for a tuning will chase a squeak inside the included repair time on a $175 to $240 visit. Book it with your regular appointment instead of as an emergency call and you'll pay nothing extra. If you're not sure how often that appointment should come around, start with how often you should tune your piano.

Prices checked August 2026.

One thing worth knowing about timing: dry contact points get dry for a reason. If your squeak showed up in January along with sticking keys and a piano that went sharpSharpA symbol (#) indicating that a pitch is raised by one semitone.The Savvy Take: Sharps are “bright.” They lift the music up. When the key signature adds sharps, the music often feels like it’s gaining energy or brilliance.View in glossary →, you have a humidity problem sitting under the pedal problem. Read how to protect your piano during winter and look at whether a Piano Life Saver system belongs in your instrument. And if the pedal noise turns out to be masking a piano that's gotten harsh and brittle on you, that's a separate job called voicing.

Any part name in here you want defined, the music glossary has it.

So: the can is still on the floor where you set it. Pick it up on your way out, put it back in the garage where the door hinges live, and let the squeak wait for your tuner.