i offer free mastering try it now!

[XLR]

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[Gizzmo0815]

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So can we pull this out of this thread and sticky it?

 

[XLR]

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[grimtraveller]

Granted all tuners are not perfect pitch but I've never seen one off more than a penny or two but have seen people off a nickel's worth. I don't understand why would you trust your ear over a tuner.

For about 8 years I had an upright piano and the best tuner I ever came across was this blind guy. He could find his way anywhere and his ears were as good as any electric tuner if not better. He was a mine of interesting info too.

 

[acidrock]

When I first started I used either a tuning fork or a harmonica,These days I use a tuner and admittedly,my tuning skills have atrophied.

 

[frederic]

For about 8 years I had an upright piano and the best tuner I ever came across was this blind guy. He could find his way anywhere and his ears were as good as any electric tuner if not better. He was a mine of interesting info too.

There are some wickedly talented piano tuners out there - the guy I use is long retired and I have to beg him to tune my upright. He used to teach piano tuning as a career, tuning "pro" pianos on the side as a "hobby" to maintain his craft - mostly NYC theaters, Carnegie, places like that.

I recently had him bring that upright back from the dead - it hadn't been tuned in about 20 years and was moved twice, now residing in my foyer where the temperature and humidity is not quite optimal for a piano or any instrument really. Much to my amazement it actually sounds like a new piano - tune and action just beautiful. And, he's got a million stories which I love to hear.

The bill hurt... but it was worth it. This is something I wouldn't even consider doing myself, not in a million years. To those who can, it's a talent I very much admire.

 

[miroslav]

Well...blind guys are weird that way (in a good way)...they hear shit even your dog can't!

It's like mixing with a DAW...people start listening with their eyes and then slowly end up shutting off their ears....they’re LOOKING at the mix!
You can try the "close your eyes trick"...but it's kinda goofy, it feels awkward.
I just try to look up past the DAW monitors when I'm just listening to the mix....luckily, when I’m doing my final mixdown, I'm not even using the DAW, as I mixdown OTB...so I can then focus more on listening to instead of looking at the mix.

 

[acidrock]

So can we pull this out of this thread and sticky it?

I think there should be a sticky regarding the much debated definition of mastering.It could be referenced rather than repeated daily.

 

[miroslav]

Much to my amazement it actually sounds like a new piano - tune and action just beautiful.

The bill hurt... but it was worth it.

How long does it hold tune...that you can actually use when recording?

I get mine tuned...sounds good for a couple of weeks, and then you can hear it starting to go in spots, and at that point, it sounds OK for playing, but I give up on trying to record with it...so I use a Kurzweil electric instead, which is OK for Rock/Pop.
I ain't playing any Rachmaninoff!

At $75 a pop...I'm not getting it tuned every few weeks.....

 

[frederic]

How long does it hold tune...that you can actually use when recording?

This particular upright will hold it's tune very well for a couple of months actually, *IF* the temperature and humidity are constant. I don't really use it for recording and haven't in, well, 20 years but it's a family heirloom and a good piano, so we decided last year to start maintaining it and caring for it much better than we have all these years. For many years it sat in the corner unloved covered in pictures no one every looked at.

I'd take it out of the foyer in a heartbeat to solve the environmental problem, but it doesn't fit through the f-ing door to the living room. Stupid old houses and their hand-crafted doors. That's another story lol.

At $75 a pop...I'm not getting it tuned every few weeks.....

This guy dinged me $275 a visit, sometimes a little less, depending what needs to be done. The piano was a real mess. Now that all the major work is done, I expect minor tuning updates to be far, far less. At least I hope so. $1000 year in piano tuning for a family of amatuer ivory ticklers is a lot of freaking money and cuts waaaaaay into my "hot rod" fund!

 

[Lt. Bob]

How long does it hold tune...that you can actually use when recording?

I get mine tuned...sounds good for a couple of weeks, and then you can hear it starting to go in spots, and at that point, it sounds OK for playing, but I give up on trying to record with it...so I use a Kurzweil electric instead, which is OK for Rock/Pop.
I ain't playing any Rachmaninoff!

At $75 a pop...I'm not getting it tuned every few weeks.....

I am a piano tuner/technician. Done it for 35 years and the last 15 or so in Baton Rouge I was doing 3-5 a day 6 days a week.

miroslav ..... there are lots of things that can cause a piano to not hold tune ..... loose pins .... sitting in a bad location (not humidity but temp changes) if it's where say, a heater vent blows directly on it or the sun shines on it thru the window and heats it up during the day. That makes the plate expand and contract and knocks it out of tune.
Something else that can cause a piano to not hold tune is a crappy tuner who can't set the pins right.

frederick ...... not that I care but that's a lot of money per visit if he's just working on the tuning. I'd want that to include some actual repairs .... possibly replacing some bushings or jack springs or something.
Piano tuning has become sorta like working on grandfather clocks .... since there are few and fewr good ones, the good ones can charge what they wish. In my opinion, and I was one of the busiest tuners anywhere, very many of them charge prices that I consider to be unreasonable.
I had a piano in New Orleans at a major cathedral that they wanted put into playing condition ...... didn't want it rebuilt ..... just playing.
I ended up doing some fairly major action registration and quite a few repairs and it was a half step flat so I had to pull it up and stabilize it.
My final bill was around 1800 bucks. But a local piano store had given an estimate for the exact same work of $7800!
So don't just assume this guy's doing you right unless he's a friend of yours.

 

[miroslav]

I am a piano tuner/technician. Done it for 35 years and the last 15 or so in Baton Rouge I was doing 3-5 a day 6 days a week.

miroslav ..... there are lots of things that can cause a piano to not hold tune ..... loose pins .... sitting in a bad location (not humidity but temp changes) if it's where say, a heater vent blows directly on it or the sun shines on it thru the window and heats it up during the day. That makes the plate expand and contract and knocks it out of tune.
Something else that can cause a piano to not hold tune is a crappy tuner who can't set the pins right.

It's in my studio, so the humidity and temp are fairly regulated, though obviously, it's not going to hold to within a few degrees and percent.
My room temps will range from 65 to 75...just turning on all my studio gear will raise the temp by 6-10 degrees (summer or winter)...and then my heat or AC will try adjust it back to normal, which for me is between 68-72.
AFA humidity, that too will fluctuate from 40% in the driest part of winter (even with a humidifier), but that's not bad...and it can go up to 65%-70% in the worst part of the summer, even with the AC going non-stop.

But really, that's not the main issues, IMO...it has more to do with just playing it. It doesn't GO OUT...it will go out...a string here and there, and while it's ever so minor, I can hear it when I'm recording and everything else is in perfect tune thanks to my strobe.
It may be just one string on one chord that is off a little...but it bugs me.

The piano I have in my studio is a smaller, console/studio piano, a Wurlitzer, and it has lighter action, brighter tone, and maybe the overall board/pins are not as stable as on a high-end piano...
...but that is what it is.

 

[Lt. Bob]

well humidity is more of a sticking keys issue. It really doesn't mess with the tuning that much.
The temp variations you're getting aren't what I'd call extreme either. A lot of these rural churches will get 110 degrees in the summer and then they kick the air on and it goes thru a 35 degree temp change ....... THAT'S excessive. But yours is what I'd consider fine.

And consoles aren't inherently inferior to grands. Depending on how old it is, Wurlitzer was a pretty good quality piano. Nowadays Wurlitzer is made in Korea last time I checked which makes it a pretty good piano.
It sounds like you're just very aware of tuning and that's one thing about real pianos. They DON'T stay in perfect tune. And they actually rarely even get into perfect tune. It's just how they are.
240 strings and 40,000 lbs of tension and wooden parts with felt bushings acting as bearings. It's pretty archaic. lol

I had a jazz club in Baton Rouge that had their piano tuned every 2 weeks!
That was regardless of who their tuner was. I'm a very good tuner and it'd still be out when it came time to tune it. There were actually some players there that wanted them to do it weekly. Not because it was awful but just because it was out a little.

I used to tell my customers that if they were super picky about tuning they might want to play an electronic piano.
Pianos are built pretty much the same way they were 150 years ago and there are certain issues that just go along with using a real piano and tuning is one of them.

$75 a pop is what I charge so that's a fair price for it.

Ya' know ...... you could probably learn to touch up those unisons yourself. Expect to screw it up the first time and have to have your tuner come in but after a few tries you could probably take care of a string or two.

 

[miroslav]

well humidity is more of a sticking keys issue. It really doesn't mess with the tuning that much.


.....


Ya' know ...... you could probably learn to touch up those unisons yourself. Expect to screw it up the first time and have to have your tuner come in but after a few tries you could probably take care of a string or two.

I kinda thought that if the air got too dry, the wood holding the pins would open/shrink enough to allow the pins to move ever-so-slightly...?


And yeah...of course I have a tuning hammer, and the little rubber wedgies, though they are getting dry, I need new ones - any good source for them?...I've had them for 30 years!
So I've had my hand's in the belly of the beast plenty of times, and have fixed the one or two sour notes.
But I get too anal and then end up spending forever tweaking it...plus, I don't have the developed ear for stretch piano tuning. You tuners KNOW how much is *right* for it to be out in order to sound good across all octaves.
Me...I end up trying to make it perfect.
I've been meaning to get a chart with the stretch offsets from Peterson...but still, it's a LOT of strings for someone who doesn't do it regularly!!!
I was almost going to invest in one of their high-end strobes that has the stretch tuning built into it for various types of pianos...but their like $500-$600!!!
I can only go so far with my Peterson VSAM.

 

[Lt. Bob]

yeah I have 4 Petersons and the best one I have is the 490st that has the temperaments built in but I actually never have even tried them. I just do the stretching by ear.

As for the humidity ...... the tuning pins are really tight in that pin block and humidity isn't gonna change the block enough to let the pins slip. The pin block is finished first off so humidity doesn't get into it very well.
But more importantly, if a pin is gonna slip ..... the pin block's in bad shape. And when a pin slips ..... they don't slip slightly. They slip a LOT!
I've actually had pianos where you'd pull a string up ... let go of the tuning hammer and it'd just turn half the way around while the string dropped 2 steps!
You have to either replace those or if the customer is cheap you can use pin block restorer. Often you can drive the pin deeper with a hammer if the coil has some space between it and the plate. That way the pin grabs a fresh section of pinblock at its' very end and that'll often hold well enough.
But with a good pinblock, the pins are so tight that any shrinking the pinblock MIGHT do won't matter. When you restring a piano you drive those pins in with a hammer. And you don't have to hit it lightly either. You have to pound the shit out of those pins to get them down all the way so they're really tight.
However ....... setting the pins is the deal. If you don't do it right, you can actually torque that tuning pin. So it's just sitting there waiting to untorque.
The hammer hits the strings .... the pin untwists and that changes the tuning.

I get all my tuning supplies from Schaff Piano Supply House.
And yeah, if you don't do it a lot it's a bear. I do a tuning in about and hour and 15 minutes if there's no problems. I've known tuners that knock them out in 45 minutes but I can garuntee you that those guys are doing so-so tunings and giving very little attention to the top octave.
In my opinion, and I've really truly done about 900 pianos a year for a very long time, an hour fifteen is about the quickest you can do a good tuning.
And that's only if you run into no problems AND the customer doesn't want to chat while you work.
The most pianos I've ever done is a day was at one of these warehouse piano sales where they had 200 pianos in a room and I could just go from one to the next and they didn't want them perfect, just sell-able.
I did 9 the first day, 8 the second day and 7 the last day. Then I had to take a few days off 'cause I wanted to take an ax to the next piano I saw!

 

[Dogbreath]

I can tuna fish.

 

[Lt. Bob]

I can tuna fish.

never heard that one before!

 

[frederic]

So don't just assume this guy's doing you right unless he's a friend of yours.

That's fair - and words to live by.

I hired him because he was recommended by a family friend who is a retired concert pianist, so I made the assumption that someone who plays piano "seriously" might have a better clue than me. I admit to having no clue at all. I can mic a piano

He did adjust the action across the board, I can feel the difference - it's consistent key to key, and he also repaired the one key that went "thud" and didnt' move the mallot arm, as well as replaced the missing mallot head that seemingly disappeared. I tried fishing down the front of the piano with a flashlight and a coat hanger but I couldn't find the missing mallot head. I'm sure it's there somewhere. Mallot heads don't just disappear.

The one thing I did notice is that mechanically, all the keys now sound the same before the mallots hit the strings... the mechanisms themselves are smoother and far more quiet.

I didn't watch him, for he likes to tell "old guy stories", and as much as I enjoy BSing as the next guy, I had things to do so I left him alone to do what he needed to do and I did other stuff, elsewhere.

He tuned it gradually in three visits because it was so far "down" in tune for so long, he didn't want to just crank it back to tune and have something split, tear, crack, or snap. It is an old piano and has been poorly treated for 20 years simply by ignoring it and using it as a picture stand and a coat rack.

Also, he's a piano tuning instructor, supposively a master of the craft. I would expect someone who is a "master" at anything to charge more than a tradesman. This is true in most industries... and one of the reasons why unions have apprentences, tradesman, journeymen, etc, each with their own pay scale. So I can appreciate the "master" aspect.

Was it worth $275 a visit? Did he do anything that a non-master but experienced tuner can do? I don't really know to be honest.

Before I hired him he did fax me a list of references... Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, several theatre companies in NYC, the Apollo, Rutgers University, etc. All with names and numbers. I didnt' call any of them because I was being harrassed to "get it done" so I took the family friend's word and wrote the checks.

It's not like his reference list was "mary from down the street" and "bob around the corner" who probably have pianos because they look nice in the libary room and tune them just for social parties.

But, it was close to $900 by the time he was done. It's cheaper than a new piano, no? And this piano, as nice as it once was, I really thought was a goner.

Like you said, it's in a bad environment - sunshine, heat register, temp and humidity changes - the foyer it's in doesn't have a foundation under it (pillars and joists) unlike the rest of the house so that room is subject to environmental changes moreso than the rest of the house. Unfortunately, it didnt' fit through the door so when the movers humped it into the foyer, that's as far is it could go. I actually wanted it upstairs in the master bedroom because I intended to run XLR cables from my studio across the attic into that bedroom, to be able to record with it "someday".

One of my many bright ideas thwarted by this old house. lol.

 

[Lt. Bob]

well it certainly sounds like he has solid credentials. That's really all you can go by usually.

And I want to be clear I'm not criticizing him per se since I don't know what all he did so it's impossible to know. 900 is not an unreasonable bill to fix up an action and get a piano pulled up to standard.
Multiple tunings is normal for bringing a piano up although I personally don't ease them up, I yank 'em all the way up first time. But it still takes 3 tunings to pull a piano up regardless of which way you do it.
If you're happy with the piano then it's worth 900 easily.

 

[frederic]

well it certainly sounds like he has solid credentials. That's really all you can go by usually.

Especially when one doesn't have a clue, like me

And I want to be clear I'm not criticizing him per se since I don't know what all he did so it's impossible to know. 900 is not an unreasonable bill to fix up an action and get a piano pulled up to standard.

No worries, I didn't take your comments as anything but helpful general conversation from a tuner's perspective, which I greatly appreciated.

Multiple tunings is normal for bringing a piano up although I personally don't ease them up, I yank 'em all the way up first time. But it still takes 3 tunings to pull a piano up regardless of which way you do it.

See, I didn't know that. I appreciate you sharing BTW.

If you're happy with the piano then it's worth 900 easily.

I am. I wish it was less, but then again anything that cuts into my hot-rod fund makes me cranky

Far cheaper than a new piano!