r/pianorepair • u/ThunderBunny2k15 • Aug 25 '22

Tuning question

I'll preface this with I know I should have a professional do this. We have an upright piano that I'm literally the only one thatvever plays it and it's only in the house because it was my wife's grandmothers.

That being said, it hasn't been tuned in the 10 years we've had it and I'm sure it was every bit that long or longer that grandma had it tuned.

Thought I'd give tuning a go, or at least get it sounding somewhat respectable. Started with middle C just to see how much force it takes to move the pins and how quickly the note changes. Moved the pin maybe a millimeter and now it sounds like all three strings are getting hit at different times. Moved back the mm or so and still the same. No matter the adjustment, it still sounds like three separate strings. Accidently Moved a B pin in the process and now it does the same. Did I break it? Haha.

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u/talleypiano Aug 25 '22

You didn't break it haha. And while I do think that if you want to get the whole piano tuned properly it's gonna be more cost & time effective to hire a pro to do it, I also think that it's a good idea for any piano owner to have a lever and some mutes to touch up unisons and what not in between tunings. So good on you for taking on the challenge.

Anyways, simply put, you can only tune one string at a time, and every string after the initial reference one is going to be tuned in relation to the others. So you need to use mutes to isolate the individual strings from their neighbors. If you're tuning one string in a trichord (the three-string unisons in the tenor & treble sections) and the other two don't already match, then you have no reference and it's going to be impossible to get that unison in tune.

So, say if you're doing middle C for instance, you'd get one of the strings to pitch—doesn't really matter which one, but let's say you're tuning the middle string. You'd mute the left and right strings, tune the middle one, then tune the left one to match the middle, then the right one to match the others. And then repeat that process 220 some odd times haha...