Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum FAQ - Tuner-Technicians Forum Can i fine tune my piano myself ?

Hi,

I just had my Yamaha console piano tuned but I’m not that happy with the tuning nor the price. Some of the 3 stringed notes sound out to me on their own, rather than paying the tuner to come back I must be able to fine tune a few notes on my own right ? Just a few triple string notes so they at least are in tune with themselves, am I naive to think this or should I try ?

If I were the tech I would appreciate a call back. You may be surprised if there was no charge.

Thnks, i may call the tuner ... do you think this is out ?
https://youtu.be/ohfduPFY2jY

You can probably get the unisons in line but it is not a trivial matter and takes practice. You need a quality tuning hammer and some mutes. Howard Pianos has some instructional videos - you might want to watch before diving in. Intro to Tuning

It is probably easier to call your tuner back.

You can get a tuning hammer and touch up unisons, but it takes time to learn how to do that in such a way that it remains stable for all that long. I used to do this with the errant unison or two that would drift after my tuners visited, but inevitably it sounded worse after I fooled around with it than if I had just left it alone. Also, a decent quality tuning hammer (by itself, not counting any other supplies) costs about the same as a tuning.

There are definitely a small handful of wayward sounding unisons in your recording, although, you're playing so quickly through the scale it's a little hard to tell exactly how many. How out of tune was the piano before? Did they have to do a pitch correction? Were any problems with the piano indicated by the tech?

Thanks T, There wasn’t a pitch correction or any probs except some gecko poop ! Pls have a listen to this (I recorded again slower), am I being too picky or should I call back the tuner ? He lives far away so I don’t want him to come for nothing.

https://youtu.be/tf6vOvQ38rI

Yes they are not perfect. But I doubt you will do better. Setting the pins requires experience.

Most of those notes are not what I’d call clean unisons. I’d just ask if they had any appointments in the area sometime soon where they might be able to check the tuning.

I know I am late but I have a comment.

If you don’t have your piano tuned often enough it might not hold as well as you would like. The tuner might have set the unisons as perfectly as he could but they can drift out as the piano wants to go back where it was. One other thing is a misaligned hammer can knock a unison out of tune pretty easily if it isn’t hitting all three strings equally.

-Bill