Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Update on my training as a piano tuner.

Well, I did decide to go and apprentice as a piano tuner and just returned from about 30 days of daily training. Lots of tuning, lots of practical experience.

I had the chance to learn on some old $150 pianos at a piano shop. It went better than expected and I was tuning some of the pianos on the sales floor before I left. Granted, I wasn't tuning any Hamlin or Knabe grands but got my hands on a $1300 used Wurlitzer a Chickering and some others.

Sort of a perfect storm situation with a very helpful store manager and a great tuner as a teacher.

I was able to catch on fast partly due to sitting with a tuner and hearing as he brought the strings into unison and an aptitude I appear to have for this trade.

Granted, I may not be tuning concert pianos anytime soon but for store work I am doing decent tunings.

OK. Now for the bad. My ears were ringing during my training. I have a possible solution for this which I tried out and it appears to work but I wanted to see if anyone else was protecting their ears and what they were doing.

One thing you do not want is your ears to be ringing this early in the game. This can lead to tinnitus. I suggest ear protection. The best is probably musicians ear plugs, custom fitted, but other cheaper alternatives are available.

I tested target range ear muffs with a volume control knob. So basically, I could slam the keys but just hear at normal range and still hear the vibrations. The ear plugs which I tried as well left me struggling to hear the vibrations. The muffs allowed me to tune just as well with ease.

The downside is someone seeing me tune this way and not thinking I'm doing a good tuning. So I'll have to explain before I start the tuning.

Absolutely use ear protection! It's not a matter of IF, but WHEN you will notice hearing loss! I recommend these: http://www.etymotic.com/hp/er20.html

I did four pitch raises and a chip tuning yesterday and my ears were fine by the end of the day (the same can't be said for my body).

I'll have to try those as I was using ones from Target called Maxx ear plugs.

Nice to hear you were able to do all that work with no repercussions. Sorry, I thought you said you didn't feel it physically. I would be completely spemt if I did that many tunings. heck, I was tired after one.

Glad to see tuners are actively protecting their ears. My grandfather went deaf tuning.

BTW. What is a chip tuning?

Anyone who says otherwise is lying, I think. I was soooooo tired! One of these things had spent the last 25 years on its side in storage (hence, it hadn't been tuned in 25 years). I remember when I'd get tired after tuning one section of one piano. I could comfortably tune four pianos a day by maybe my 40th tuning; granted I use an ETD.

A chip tuning is a piano's first series of tunings after being strung, or restrung. The name is derived from the usual plucking of the string with a key top to make the string sound.

Thanks for the info. Well, I have a quite a few more to get to 40 tunings but its good to know it gets easier. I'm pretty wiped after a tuning.

Though I do enjoy it. It's like putting a puzzle together.

I'm down for the night.