Questions about piano tuning

[Bob]

My school piano is going out of tune.

What can I do about it?   (The piano tuner would cost money.)

Is tuning it up a little something I can do?  On one hand I think 'no way, I'll mess it up.' On the other hand, I see stuff on the internet on how to do it and I think maybe I could.

What tools are needed? 

What's the procedure?   Get the center octave in tune, ET, then match the octaves up going out both directions?  I had heard about stretching the octaves, but then today I read that the octaves stretch naturally when you tune the octaves anyway.

I can turn the endpins fine.  Is there a quick easy way to get each single string to sound?  I was able to tune three strings for one key up ok by pricking them. 

This is an old school upright by the way. 

How do you tune those three strings for each note?  Are they supposed to be exactly in tune with each other?  I hear how piano tuning is an art, how you can make a piano sound dead if you don't voice it right.  Are the three strings supposed to be slightly off tuned from each for some reason?

How do I get started doing this myself?  It seems like it's something that I might be able to tackle.

Where do you get the tools and materials for piano tuning?

[ksnmohan]

Hallo Bob,

Normally I would leave it to a professional Piano Tuner - I don't mean that you cannot do it, but it is the experience and knowledge which will be needed if something goes seriously wrong while doing a sensitive job.

A good site on the web is

 https://www.stevespianoservice.com

Cannot the school raise the money for the upkeep of music? I am surprised!

Prof K S (Mohan) Narayanan
Musicologist, Composer, Teacher
Chennai, India

[penguinlover]

I haven't read the book yet, but Chang's piano book inludes a section on piano tuning.  You can download it for free.

[timothy42b]

How do I get started doing this myself?  It seems like it's something that I might be able to tackle.

Where do you get the tools and materials for piano tuning?

I'm sure Allied will sell you the tuning hammer. 

Learning to use it is not trivial.  Not just knowing what to tune the note to, but physically how to set the pins so they stay takes a long time to learn.  It probably takes as much skill to tune a piano as to play one.  Stretch won't come naturally, you have to count the beats. 

But then, once you didn't know anything about playing, and now you do.  Tuning can be the same journey and it has to start somewhere.

There are correspondence courses available and good reference books. 

Yes, the three strings tune exactly the same.  You put wedges under the two you're not tuning so they don't sound. 

[Bob]

Is each note supposed to be perfectly in tune with the tuner?  0 cents sharp/flat?

I would think they should be, but I know that's not how a piano is tuned. 

[leucippus]

I tune my pianos myself with what I consider to be satisfactory results.  I'm sure it won't compare with a professional tuner, but it sounds good enough for me.

First off, I studied the correct way to tune a piano using beats.  I tried that but I could not hear the best because my ears are damaged.  I was in an explosion and a child and I have a constant ringing in my ears that prevents me from hearing the beats.

So I tossed out the formal method and this is how I do it now,…

First, I got a Korg electronic tuning meter and a tuning "hammer" which is actually just wrench of course.

I didn't use felt or any kind of rubber stops to stop adjacent strings from vibrating.  In fact, I don't even use the piano hammers when tuning.  Instead I use a guitar pick.

I pull back the damper form the triple I want to tune and wedge it out of the way.  I actually use a very large and long screwdriver for that.  Then I pick only the center string of the triplet using the guitar pic and bring it into tune using the meter.  Once I get the center string tuned using the meter.  I just two the other two strings to the center string by ear.  I checked the first few with the meter too, but they were right on so from that point on I knew I could just tune the outer two by ear.

Then I just carried on tuning the whole piano using that procedure.  When I was done it sounded fine.  It was a vast improvement over how it was before.  There were a couple notes that I had to go back over and touch up,  but some of those were due to slipping tuning pins.

Slipping tuning pins can be quickly repaired in two ways.  One way is to take a heavy hammer and tap them in just a little bit deeper.  It should only take one or two taps with a nice heavy hammer.  The pin only need to be moved in a very slight amount usually.  A second way to repair them is to buy a solution that you squirt on them and it causes the wood to swell up and grab them tighter.  I didn't need to resort to that.  I only had a couple lose pins and tapping them in slightly took care of the problem.

The biggest caution to the whole thing is to be sure you have the tuning wrench on the correct pin.  It is really easy to accidentally have the tuning wrench on the wrong string.  Then you are listening to one string and tightening the one next to it and you can easily over-tune it and break it.    I have yet to break a string and some of my string are pretty rusty too.

One bad thing about doing this on a school piano is that if anything at all breaks on the piano while your turning it, or even after you have tuned it, you could easily be blamed for it even if it had nothing to do with you.  I do my own pianos because I own them and if I screw up I'm the only one I have to answer to.

But I have had satisfactory results.  I should mention though that it takes quite a bit of time.  You're tuning 88 notes and many of those are 3 times over.  It's take a lot of concentration and effort to tune each string perfectly.   It actually took me several days to tune mind.  I would just tune an octave at a time, and then take a break.   But I'm an old worn-out fart too. (ha ha)

I think when I was in my 20's I could have tuned a whole piano like this pretty quick.  It would be nice to have a helper too, although not necessary.  I did mine entirely alone.

If you just have a couple keys that are really far off, you might try to just bring those up to where they are in tune with the piano as is.  I mean, instead of trying to bring the whole piano up to a fresh A=440.  You can just clean up the bad notes for starters to get a feel for what you are getting into.  You could probably just do those by ear using a guitar pick to discover which sting is actually out.

This is totally unconventional but it WORKS!