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Amen. With client agreement, seasonal float from 438-42 is good for all concerned. It tends toward better tuning stability: pianist is happier, and tuner's arm can't complain either.

Raising pitch is really not that big of a deal and not a very difficult task.
There was a tuner in town who never raised pitch to A-440. When he left town and we all started following up with his clients we were finding pianos everywhere tuned well, but at A435 and below. He didn't even ask them if they wanted them at pitch so a lot of them didn't know what was happening. A church called him back right before a Christmas concert because the piano was just tuned by him 50 cents flat. He had to go back and retune it. A different tuner comes in and looks like the bad guy because the customer doesn't understand why the piano needs extra tunings to re-stabilize.
I float pitch if the piano is sharp but always pitch raise if it's flat.
Now, if the pitch is going to climb all the way back when the humidity rises again then that is a different story. The piano should have a Dampp-chaser in that case.

This will vary depending upon location. In Arkansas, float from 438-442 makes sense (again, with client approval.) If we PR to A440 in the dead of winter, 6 months later the pitch may be as high as A444-5. Yes, a DC will resolve this if the client is willing to pay for it. Many are not. Raising pitch is easy, true enough. Pulling it down from 445 to 440 is another story. Depending upon the age and condition of the piano allowing pitch to rise that much sharp can cause other problems.

If it's less than +/- 5 cents, I don't consider it a pitch correction. I consider a pitch correction between 5 and 30 cents a minor pitch correction, and a pitch correction of 30+ cents, I consider it a major pitch correction. I then charge accordingly. Obviously a major pitch correction is more work than a minor one.

I generally don't float the pitch. I like knowing the piano is at the right pitch when I leave rather than hope for it to be roughly there at some uncertain future date.

As for servicing the piano vs. serving the customer; the two are not mutually exclusive.

Maybe this will sound sacrilegious. I understood so that guided this guy. He believed that sharping a pitch then he can break down the string. There are the additional work and the loss of his time. If the piano is old, it will hold pitch temporarily (lost pin). Often a client does not understand how work his piano. If the piano quickly goes float, then the client don't trust of the professional technician. For the lay person the owner piano I think is more important than the stability of intervals and chords and pleasant sounding than the height of each of the keys. So I think that for a vintage piano A = 420 is acceptable. But a technician is a must to say about it the owner of a piano

Often, I run into pianos that were received for free, or inherited, or the dreaded "craigslist deal." I'm not going to suggest that my customers spend extra money on these pianos if what they want is a piano, that sounds good with itself, for their children/themselves to practice on. I rarely do pitch raises on such pianos. There's no point in risking all that can go along with a pitch raise (broken strings, etc) if my customer doesn't want or need it. I make sure to tell my customer I'm not tuning it to standard pitch, but there isn't any point in doing a 50c pitch raise on a piano that's 50 years old or a piano that hasn't been tuned in 20 years. When I get to anything built before 1939, I generally assume it wasn't designed to be tuned at A440 anyways.

"In 1939, an international conference[9] recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz, now known as concert pitch. As a technical standard this was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 and reaffirmed by them in 1975 as ISO 16. The difference between this and the diapason normal is due to confusion over the temperature at which the French standard should be measured. The initial standard was A = 439 Hz (info), but this was superseded by A = 440 Hz after complaints that 439 Hz was difficult to reproduce in a laboratory because 439 is a prime number.[9]"

Standard pitch is simply a number agreed upon, and any number of major musical groups don't agree with it anyways. For example, the New York Phil Harmonic tunes to A442.

I would much rather have a piano that sounds good with itself, with no broken strings or damage to the pin block, then tune it to a nearly arbitrary number. The amount of stress on a piano frame is phenomenal, there is no point in adding to it because we want to adhere to something that our customer doesn't care about.

My quote is from Wikipedia.

Ugh, Wikipedia again. The Encyclopedia where anyone can change any article at any time, yet people still consider it reliable.

A440 is harddly an arbitrary number. The AFM adopted it in 1917 and I see pianos as early as 1920 with A440 cast on the plates.

Pianos should be at the correct pitch.

Yes, indeedy. I think not raising a piano to pitch, unless floating a few cents due to extreme humidity variations, is really due to either fear or just plain laziness. Even if the piano is less stable after a pitch raise it is still a worthwhile task in the long run, less work is needed the next time its tuned. It doesn't cost that much
money. If a person cannot afford to care for an acoustic piano properly, they cannot afford an acoustic piano.

I've pitch raised thousands of pianos and the few times that strings have broke during tuning have oddly, not been during a pitch raise. And I've never had a plate break. Knock on wood. I agree, pianos should be tuned to the correct pitch. If I was not a piano tuner and I hired a technician to tune my piano but they tuned it flat, I would be very disappointed with the results and would hire another one to get it right.

If a piano is being used for a child taking lessons we do a disservice to the customer by tuning below A440. We would not expect a child to properly learn woodworking if their measuring stick was 11-1/2" rather than 12". I agree that if the piano is only being used occasionally when "Uncle Harry" comes over to play then standard pitch may not be critical. If,however,a piano is so old and in such poor condition that A-440 is not possible, and if a child is taking lessons, I will encourage the customer to replace the piano. If all they can afford is a few hundred dollars maybe they should forget about piano and try guitar instead.

Interestingly enough, Verdi had stated that all of his operas should be sung at A=432. It makes a huge difference for singers. I have my Petrof tuned to that, and prefer this. Some orchestras in Europe are way higher than 440. Just because it works to make strings sound brighter doesn't mean it makes the music sound better. I figure a lot of orchestras tuned to a lower pitch in previous centuries and since I play most music from pervious time periods, it sounds better that way.

All that is to say, if a piano is in tune with itself, for most people it shouldn't matter if it's at 440 or not, especially if it's not able to stay there.

If a base of a pitch is A=440. It's good and correctly. But main a goal of tuning to made between A4 and A3 there is clean octave. And all intervals have hard correct sound for yours ears and other people.

I believe that you are an exception to the rule in that you prefer your piano tuned at a lower pitch for singing purposes, nothing wrong with that. But I disagree with your premise that for most people it shouldn't matter if it is at A440 or not. If I were to ask a hundred piano owners if they would like their pianos tuned at the pitch it was designed for, the pitch most studio recordings are at, the pitch any musician would expect it to be at if they were to play along with their other instrument, etc. I think they would choose A440. The notion that the piano either has to be flat and stable, or set to A440 and unstable, is false. If a piano is unstable at A440 then it was not tuned properly in the past, putting aside humidity issues. Stable and at the right pitch is ideal IMHO.

Personally, I think a piano sounds best at around A442 or even sharper.

I agree with BYRON ,

plus pitch is closely related to tone quality , due to the level of string elasticity allowed.

lowering the pitch make a more diffuse pitch impression, as the iH raise

One of the reason it may please the singers

Modern piano are designed for a certain pitch 440-, often 442 Hz, while that light difference may change a little the tone it can be accepted- 438 begin yet to sound flat to me, but a (some)trained musician may go along with it.
For children, , no they need to have their ear and musical memory build with ta good pitch.

Do someone want another cup of tea ?

It probably have beenanswered to you, but pianos move in their medium range way more than in basses and treble.
On a stable piano, it may lend to the impression that the top and lower parts are out of tune, while , pitch wise, at last those are the mediums that have changed.

If you have perfect pitch plus a good pitch reference, and the mediums are at an accepteable 440for you no PR should be necessary, but it may happen after a hard season that even a well stabilised piano moves a bit more than expected.

the 80's years is supposed to be not that old for an acoustic piano(hopefully)we are not used to deal with objects that can saty useable for so long, those daus indeed.
But Yamahas sometime retain their qualities for 30-40 years.

Gernerally speaking high end pianos are supposed to keep theirs way longer than that, but really the final result depends also some what of the climate and how much the piano was directly exposed to it.
I often work on 1980 German pianos, some of them are very dynamic sign of a resilient soundboard)
Some of them retained just a good part in the mediums and the soprano region is pleasing but quiet if compared with a more recent piano.
I have seen 1960 pianos of the major brands that where really excellent. WIth time the tone hardens due to the steel of the wire. we change them when the piano is worth it.


I also have some cookies if someone is interested.

But why A442? If many professional ears of a musicants have a nice aesthetic a enjoyment (joy) when their piano 440

Absolutely! And quite honestly, I seldom have strings break, but the majority happen on non pitch raises.

Usually my pitch raise scenario goes like this:

I walk into a new customer's house and find a piano that hasn't been tuned for decades. Either they just got the piano, or they inherited it, or they bought it off Craigslist for their child to take lessons. It's 100+ or more flat.

First thing I do is check the condition of the strings and pins, making sure there is no rust. Next I check the bridges to make sure there is no splitting or loose pins. 95% of the time, the piano checks out okay on both.

I then demonstrate to the customer with the fork where A should be vs. where it is. If they tell me they don't hear it because they're not musical, then I show them visually with a tuning app.

I explain to them that because the piano has been neglected for so long, it needs a pitch correction in order to be "really" tuned. I caution them up front that they are at a higher risk for strings breaking during the initial process, and that if any would break, it would be an extra charge. I also tell them that bringing it up will cost more than a standard tuning due to the extra work involved. I then ask them if they want me to raise it or tune it where it's at.

Virtually 100% of the time, the response is "I want it done right." I would say 99% of the time I get through without losing a single string. I then explain to the customer that because of the dramatic change in tension, the piano should be expected to drift some, and that it will fully stabilize after the next tuning, which I recommend in 6 months. Usually they schedule it before I leave.

And that's that! Communicate and be fully up front. People who bring service people into their homes want things done the right way. Six months later, I find the piano has drifted but is still light years better than it was six months before. A simple tuning at pitch is usually the end of it. The customer is happy and another piano has joined the ranks of being at pitch.

All I can say is, wow.

Thank,Samthetech.I'm think about that as you

Right, because customers don't care if their pianos are in tune or not. ??

Not to mention those young ears being trained on below pitch pianos.

Sorry, I'm just....amazed.