The piano is one of only a half dozen instruments that are not tuned by the player every time it is used. Violists, Cellists and Guitarists do not have to call a tuner, but pianists, piano owners and piano teachers have to find a tuner / technician to maintain their instruments.

The piano tuner professional understands the main enemy of piano tuning and overall piano health is humidity / temperature changes, others would be surprised to discover the second enemy of piano health, and longevity is lack of service.

Nobody is playing ~ why have it tuned?

Even if no one is playing your piano, the weather is playing it 24 hours everyday and it should be tuned regularly.

With over 20 tons of string pressure, pianos are designed to be maintained at A440 standard pitch and when a piano is allowed to go off-pitch the curvature of the soundboard changes and the whole structure of the piano shifts. As you can imagine, this bending and shifting is not productive for the health of your piano.

Preventive maintenance is another reason a piano should be tuned, even if the customer doesn’t care how badly and inharmonic the piano sounds when out of tune. Like so many things in life, piano problems often develop over time. The watchful eye of the piano tuner can help to avoid thousands of dollars in repair and potentially avoid losing all value.

We all know people who have “rolled the dice” with their pianos by not having them tuned for years. To take such a gamble with instruments that cost thousands of dollars just to avoid the price of a couple tunings each year seems counterproductive. And certainly only use a piano tuner who is a skilled professional.

From Steinway & Sons:

Tuning is an art practiced by skilled professionals and under no circumstances should anyone other than a professional be allowed to try to tune your Steinway piano.

Scheduling Your Piano Tuner

How often should you schedule appointments with your piano tuner?

Let’s ask the people who make pianos.

Read what piano manufactures say

A basic tuning fee ranges from $105 ~ $140 and although a basic tuning usually only takes 45 to 90 minutes, I recommend reserving two hours for complete service. Please read the following for more insight.

Piano Tuner Price Shopping

Quality is the best economy ~ Similar to other businesses, piano tuners receive phone calls from potential customers shopping for the cheapest price. I wonder if they realize the huge differences among piano tuners. While everyone enjoys a good bargain, the care of your piano should only be trusted to a skilled professional and the piano tuning fee should not be the determining factor in choosing your piano tuner.

For many, there are only three issues that shape customer’s opinion and judgment about a tuner’s service.

1. The opinion of the person who recommended the technician.
2. The personality of the technician.
3. The price ~ fee ~ cost of service.

In regards to price, if a piano tuner / technician’s price is low, many reasons to themselves; “If he is so good why are his prices lower than my last tuner? … or lower than Aunt Susie’s tuner?”

Piano Tuning ~ There Is A Difference

The bargain-basement tuner, believing customers have a hard time distinguishing one level of piano service from another, adopts an attitude of, “Why should I spend time, money and effort improving my piano tuning and servicing skills when customers can’t tell the difference anyway?” More often than not, he underestimates his customers, and is therefore always looking for business.

Not only is that attitude unethical, but the bargain-basement tuner seems totally unaware of the “WOW” factor. When an exceptional high quality technician services a piano after following a bargain tuner and the customer sits down to play, many times the pianist responds with; “WOW, what a difference!” When given the chance to compare high quality piano tuning with low quality piano tuning the pianist can, and does tell the difference.

Customers pay thousands of dollars for their instruments and to gamble on the care of such an instrument just to avoid a small difference in tuning cost seems an unwarranted gamble.