PA, DE, Wilmington Piano Tuner Explains Why It Costs More To Tune a Piano If It’s Been More Than One Year Since the Last Tuning

A piano has over 200 strings at 150 lbs. tension each, totaling 30,000 lbs. of tension. A wooden structure, even when reinforced by cast iron, cannot maintain that level of tension indefinitely. When a piano is tuned every 6-12 months, the pitch falls about 2-5% of the way to the note below. That amount can be raised in one tuning. If the time between tunings goes beyond a year, the pitch falls too much to be brought back up in one tuning. The reason is that for every amount your Wilmington piano tuner raises the pitch on a string, it falls back 10-38% of the amount of the change over the next ten minutes. That’s a small amount when the change is 5%, but it gets significant when a piano is 20-50% low. When the change in pitch is a large amount, it is difficult to predict precisely how much it will fall. The procedure, then, is to rough tune the piano 10-38% above standard pitch, and it will fall to standard pitch as it is tuned. Then it’s fine-tuned at standard pitch. The entire process takes about 2 hours for your Delaware piano tuner. For this type of piano tuning, Kenneth Keith, your Wilmington piano tuning expert, does not need to wait in between tunings.

If your piano has not been tuned for more than ten years, it may be more than 50% low. In that case, I would need to do two rough tunings in order to bring the pitch up, and your investment would be proportionally more. Properly tuned piano strings are designed to be at about 70% of their breaking tension, so the sound will be loud. If your piano tuner Wilmington DE professional piano technician were to try to raise the pitch more than 50%, there would be a greater chance of breaking strings. The process, then, is to raise it part way in one rough piano tuning, the rest of the way with the second rough tuning, then fine tune.

As an experienced Wilmington DE piano tuner, I would examine the overall condition of your piano when I arrive, and write up a proposal for the work it needs. If you approve the piano services work that needs to be done, I can usually do the piano tuning and/or piano repairs the same day, or we could schedule another time that’s convenient for you.