Piano Tuning; What Goes Into a 1 Hour Service Call?

During a piano tuning appointment, clients will often ask questions like “How often should my piano be tuned?,” “What kind of work do you recommend to fix my piano?” or even just “How bad was it?” We always appreciate these kinds of questions, because they represent an underlying concern about keeping the piano working properly. We feel a strong responsibility to give these questions answers that will help people understand their piano better, and it is from the conversations that result from these questions that I am attempting to distill some useful information here for current and future piano owners.

“I called you out here because it’s been a few years since I tuned the piano last, but it sounds fine to me. What do you think about this piano, is it way out of tune?”  

Pianos are a bit like people, when they are young they are able to perform feats of athleticism that when they are old become more difficult. Pianos develop creaky joints, begin to respond unevenly, and parts begin to wear and become brittle. Friction can increase and cause parts of the piano to stop working entirely. Guitar and string players know well how much of a difference new strings can make on their instruments’ sound, even after only a few years have passed. Unlike some instruments such as violins, which have very few moving parts, and can become more valuable with age, pianos, with literally thousands of joints, pivots, and friction points will even after 20-30 years begin to show the marks of time, and after 50 often require restoration work to continue to perform at a consistent level, especially if they have not been maintained regularly. When we sit down at a piano for the first time, besides listening to how the piano currently sounds, we are also looking at various parts and feeling the keys. We look for each key to travel smoothly and have a similar weight from note to note. We feel if there is a gap between when the key is pressed and when it engages the hammer, and test the damper pedal to see if all keys cut off consistently and evenly. Often there is other work that can be done to quickly improve a piano that feels inconsistent or sluggish.

“Oh, I see you have the whole piano taken apart. I’ve never seen the piano opened up like that. Is everything OK?”

A competent piano technician is aware of the common ways in which pianos wear and age, and will, even during basic tuning appointments, be taking steps to ensure the future health of the piano by addressing small issues before they become bigger, lubricating, sanding and aligning parts in ways that ensure the piano retains its tone and feel, which often extends the life of the instrument by decades. This is one of the most beneficial parts of a service call, and to extend the previous analogy, has the effect on a piano that regular exercise has for human beings in helping to keep aging instruments playing like a piano that is much newer.

In an age where many consumer items are single use or soon discarded, analog musical instruments such as the piano remain a kind of product that benefits from regular maintenance, and can continue making music for a lifetime.

“I looked at the descriptions of your services on your website and booked the one hour appointment. I just got this piano from someone on Facebook who was giving it away and moved it into my house. I figured since nothing was broken it could be tuned in an hour?”

An hour is both a long and a short period of time. When waiting for a dinner date to arrive at a restaurant, for example, an hour can feel like an eternity. On the other hand, when working on pianos, we often find ourselves continually trying to squeeze more and more work into that one hour block. For pianos that haven’t been serviced for a few years, they will nearly always need more work than an hour service call will allow for. In these cases, a two hour “Piano Tuning+” appointment is necessary to make sure that there is time to do things properly.

“I called you to tune my piano because my daughter uses an app to follow along with what she plays, but the piano is so out of tune that the app thinks she is playing a ‘B’ one step lower than the ‘C’”. Is that going to be easy to fix?

It is not only extra repairs for which the two hour appointment is supposed to leave extra time, but also when a piano has not been tuned for a period of years, it is common for the overall tension of the strings to lessen, resulting in the piano playing a note or sometimes two below the proper pitch. Raising the pitch of the entire piano from a lower note to a higher one requires tuning the entire piano multiple times to ensure the tuning will remain stable at the new pitch. That is another reason why two hour appointments are necessary for pianos that haven’t seen regular service.

One hour service calls are, on the whole, best suited to maintaining the current level of your piano. Through efficiency and planning it is often possible for us to make a big difference in a piano over a short period of time, but the task is usually great and the time short. As a company, our values push us to always do our best to provide the greatest possible value, so if you think your piano could use some improvements, get in touch with our office staff and we can find what works best for you and your instrument.

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for considering us when servicing your piano!