Let’s say a piano is brand new in a store and needs to be prepped. A technician might spend an entire day doing full regulation, voicing and tuning as well as other refinements. After a full day of work, guess what? It’s halfway there. It’s halfway to being the perfect piano, and then the tuner comes back another day. Maybe there’s a customer who plays on a high level who’s not entirely satisfied with the performance. The tuner might spend even another day prepping and fine-tuning. By this time, we have gotten halfway yet again.
This is a process that could be repeated over and over. The piano gets into the person’s home, and they get the best technician they can find because they want this piano to be as exquisite as possible. They bring their technician on a regular basis, and each time they come in, they get just a little bit closer to perfection. Let’s contrast this with someone else who buys a piano who doesn’t play very much, and they don’t tune it for five years. Well, guess what? There is going to be more backward steps then forward steps. The piano can degrade over time!
There is a saying among piano tuners who say you can’t tune an out of tune piano. As crazy as this sounds, there is some truth to this. Think about it. If a piano drops in pitch when a tuner comes to tune the piano, as they tune one section of the piano, the previously tuned section is knocked out of tune because of the additional force on the bridge. That makes the soundboard flex which throws out the part that they just tuned. If the piano has not been tuned in a very long time, it takes multiple tunings to get the piano in the zone. Even that tuning will not hold for very long, and then the tuner has to go back and tune again!
Many people, instead of getting closer to perfection are going two steps backward, one step forward when they tune. If you don’t do it enough, you’re degrading the experience you have when you’re playing your piano. The trick is to get ahead of the curve. If you can put the time in on the front end on your piano and put the time necessary to get it to a point of stability, each time you bring your tuner in you can get closer to the theoretical perfect piano. There it is, the perfect piano! I hope your piano is as close to perfection as possible and thanks for joining us! This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. info@livingpianos.com
One thought on “The Perfect Piano – Why You Can’t Tune an Out of Tune Piano”
Hi Robert.
My family has a piano and unfortunately, I’m the only who plays it, but it’s waaaaay out of tune and has been for a long while The last time we brought a tuner in, he didn’t even tune it, just sat and yacked our ears off. How do we find a good tuner who doesn’t cost too much to bring in, but will work with the piano to bring it back to being in tune after the multiple visits needed to bring the keyboard to stability? Also, how do I help preserve this upright with baby grand innards so it’ll stay in wonderful shape, and how do you hide scratches? We’ve got dogs so it does have a few here and there. Thank you very much.
~CJ