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!
Topic: Questions about piano tuning