Piano Tuning Atlanta

To determine how often your piano needs to be tuned, it’s good to consider what is making the piano go out of tune, and how frequently this happens. Pianos that are subjected to many hours of heavy use daily, (such as at colleges and places of piano playing instruction) sometimes need to be tuned weekly. The majority of pianos aren’t subjected to that much rigorous playing, and don’t go out of tune this fast.

For pianos that have moderate to light use, humidity changes of the seasons are more of the cause for the piano changing pitch.

All of the piano strings bear down on a bridge fastened to the soundboard. It’s similar to the violin strings that run over the bridge connected to the belly of the violin. High humidity swings will fill the wood with high moisture content, and the piano soundboard will swell. If you picture the belly of the violin swelling and forcing the strings upward, you have a picture of how the piano soundboard also swells and increases tension on the piano strings, causing them to go sharp. When the humidity decreases, the wood shrinks, backing the bridges away from the strings, so the piano goes flat.

If you have a good control of humidity swings in your home, it will help to preserve your piano tuning (and your piano itself). For about $20.00, you can purchase a small, digital, humidity gauge in the indoor/outdoor-thermometer section of many stores, such as Walmart or Lowes. Keeping this gauge near your piano allows you to keep track of the high and low ranges of humidity levels to which your piano is subjected. The desirable range is around 38% to 46% relative humidity. If you see bigger swings than this, you’ll probably be noticing your piano going out of tune due to these shifts.

There are some steps that can be taken to help stabilize your piano during humidity fluctuations. Installing a household dehumidifier or humidifier, as needed, can be beneficial. Also, there are climate control systems (recommended by piano manufacturers) that can be installed inside the pianos that are subjected to high humidity changes.

If humidity changes are not too drastic, a common recommendation for piano tuning is once or twice a year. Contact our Piano Tuner / Technician, Charity K, at 770-876-7340 (call or text) for a piano inspection evaluation of a piano you are interested in purchasing, piano repair, or piano tuning / pitch adjustment in the Atlanta metro area. Enjoy the beautiful music of a well-tuned piano!

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This entry was posted by piano on Friday, May 10th, 2013 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.