Is it normal to have to tune a piano twice?

[husentiel91]

A guy that I hired to tune my piano said its so out of tune that it needs to be tuned twice. He is obviously going to to charge me for two separate times, since he is coming back next monday to finish the tuning. My piano hasnt been tuned since I bought it, so it is very out of tune, but this still caught me off guard. Is this a common occurance or am I being conned by an elderly Polish man?

[dogperson]

If you do not consistently maintain your piano,  and it is very out of tune, it may need two or more tunings to get it up to pitch.  It can’t be done in one tuning because of the risk of breaking strings. It could possibly need a third.

 you are  not being conned. You are just paying the price for not taking care of your piano like you should have.  Not to have regular maintenance on your piano is the same is not having maintenance on your car.

[j_tour]

Is this a common occurance or am I being conned by an elderly Polish man?

No, you're not necessarily being conned.

It's been a long time since I've had an acoustic piano that wasn't rented, but I recall this being the case with an execrable piano that was moved after years of neglect as a younger teenager.

I like the car analogy above, so here's another one:  it's pretty often that when I go to have my teeth cleaned the hygienist needs two sessions.  It isn't (usually!) neglect or time, but how Dr. Teeth uses the piano is a factor as well.

[quantum]

A pitch raise is often done in stages.  If the piano is very much off pitch, it would be very difficult to both bring it up to pitch and have in in tune in just one pass. 

To have an idea of what is going on: take a cardboard shoe box and stretch a couple rubber bands around it.  Pluck the rubber bands, they will produce a pitch, make note of the pitch.  Now take one of the rubber bands and raise its pitch by stretching it so the tension of the speaking portion is higher.  Pluck and listen, the rubber band you increased tension should have a higher pitch, but what about the other rubber bands, they might have a lower pitch.  Why? because changing the tension of just one band altered the balance of tension over the entire box.  Now raise the tension of all the other rubber bands.  What happens to the pitch of the first rubber band you raised?  It might have lowered. 

Similar thing is happening in a piano, you are just dealing with around 200 strings that put several tons of tension on the cast iron frame. 

[Bob]

Yes.  If it's moved or hasn't been tuned for a while it needs to be tuned up just to get it close, but then it's going to try to go back to how it was.  The pins in the wood want to slowly unwind or get to a state where they're not able to release any more wound up energy compared to the strength of the pin in the wood.  The first tuning gets them out of that state and close to being in tune.  Then they start going back.  Another tuning will get them back in a more tuned up state.   But.... Then they'll start going back but not quite as much from the first tuning/change.  It depends how good the piano is.  If the pins don't hold well anymore I think a piano tech can do some to help, but it's probably not great, as in the piano can't hold its pitch well anymore.  Even when it's tuned a few times and is as good as it will reasonably get, once you start playing on it, it goes out of tune from that or just from sitting and starting to adjust back again very minutely.