What is the usual time frame for a RPT to finish tuning a piano ?

I mean the usual process of setting the temperament, up and down the octaves, to completing all the unisons. Does anyone think 40 minutes is achievable ?

For most, on average 1 hour. Others 1.5. Yes, even 20 minutes is achievable with a lot of speed and experience.

One hour.

40 minutes only if the piano is barely out of tune, or you don't consider accuracy as important as speed.

It really depends on the piano and the state of in/out of tuneness. A good quality upright with a good pin block that is predictable and is only a couple of cents off can be cranked out pretty easily in 45 minutes. Good quality grands take a little more time for me, usually a bit more than an hour, because it's physically a slightly different process. Also, the better the piano--especially high quality grands--the more time I spend really dialing in the intervals and unisons.

I was told to just "tune faster".
I'm trying various mute techniques and or using a temperment strip or "strip Muting" the whole piano. What helps you guys?

Drink lots of Coke and be determined that you will not leave the piano until you are finished tuning!

This is so true...The first time I tuned my piano, it took 4+ hours and it was what I would consider sub-average.

...eight months later, it now takes me an hour and a half and I am now quite happy with the result. Unisons hold their pitch (better hammer technique), thirds and sixths don't beat too fast; their respective beat rates increase uniformly up the scale, and the amount of stretch across the scale is quite good and very pleasing to my ear. Having a good temperament is one thing, but of little value if the octaves unisons are not where they should be.

I mute all tri and bi chords leaving one string open when tuning the entire register. For tuning tweaks in the interim, I just use a couple of mutes when certain unisons/notes start to stray.

Your results may vary, but patience is key. Speed comes with lots of practice and experience, both of which are a work-in-progress.

Glen

Couldn't agree more - there's absolutely NO substitute.

When I was at college (27 yrs ago - !), our tuning instructors were VERY strict.

For the first maybe 6 months-or-so, they would sometimes insist that you spent the whole

3-hour session setting the scale to perfection..... then re-setting it time & again

to make sure it was flawless.

THREE HOURS - setting 13 strings!!! - then came the unisons, then the octaves etc etc.


27 years later, and an 'average' piano takes roughly an hour to tune 220 strings! .

.

Thanks, John...So glad to know my own patience is starting to pay off - albeit, slowly .

I've only gotten it right on one occasion without having to retrace my steps since embarking on learning to tune.

The more time and focus I spend on F3 to A4 temperament, the more likely I am to get octaves/unisons correct in the interest of consistency - this is happening with near regularity even on the few pianos my friends are now allowing me to tune.

Glen

Oh yes, I was referring to upright, not grand.

So it appears that on average it takes about an hour. What if you have to raise the pitch ? Meaning you do a rough tuning first followed by a fine tuning. Is 90 minutes a realistic target ?

There's no reason why a grand should take any longer to tune than an upright -

assuming there are an equal nuumber of strings!


As for a pitch-raise, 90 mins is easily do-able.....

a quick run-though to raise the pitch (15 mins), followed by a 'proper' tuning.

If the pitch is a long way off to start with though, a follow-up tuning will probably be

required very shortly afterwards.

.

Hi list. Long time lurker first time poster. Often times a DIYer will find that it takes a long time to tune their piano at first and then think that they are becoming proficient at tuning because their speed improves after a few months.

Tuning the same piano over and over again becomes easier and easier because you are continuing to capitalize on your previous efforts. The real test comes when you have to start over on a new out of tune piano each time. Getting good at this takes years and hundreds or thousands of pianos. It's harder to develope good hammer technique by tuning the same piano over and over again.

Don't worry about the speed, it comes with practice as others have said. There are a few things that cut down or add to the time. One is how long it takes you to move the tuning hammer from one pin to the next. Another is how many times you have to manipulate the hammer before the string is in tune and how long it takes your ear to recognize that the string is on pitch (or the unison is pure).

I've been tuning professionally for over 30 years, so I can naturally tune faster than someone who hasn't been at it long. However, the time it takes me to tune any particular piano can vary from as little to 30 minutes to 2 hours or more. A good studio piano that is tuned regularly may easily only take 30 minutes and that is with going through it twice completely as I almost always do. For some reason, a grand always takes longer. A broadcast quality tuning can easily eat up two or more hours.

I always use muting strips to get the general pitch. There is almost no piano I ever tune which doesn't require some pitch correction. A broadcast quality tuning requires the strip mutes first (at least two passes), then to tune each unison as solidly as possible to my ETD program using a single rubber mute.

Hi Bill,



I'm just curious Bill, as my ETD (the RCT) has a over pull calc that works pretty well. Could you skip the second run of pitch raise if you pulled the outside strings up during the first PR using the ETD? I'm just thinking that bringing the others up to pitch would equalize the stress earlier than just tuning the center strings twice, and then bring up the outside strings.

There are probably a lot of other factors here too.

What type of ETD are you using? I appreciate your time and help here Bill.
Thanks...

Speed increase comes as a natural product of experience. Don't fret over it, and don't push it. It'll come.

To add this to my earlier posting.

Oh... sorry... I see.

If I read the whole thing, It's a concert tuning as apposed to a pitch raise. Double tuning with the mute strip is a great technique. As you finish the first run tuning the center strings the first center strings have dropped pitch. Re-tuning the centers the second time will allow for even less drop before tuning the outer strings to unison.

I should have thought about this more before I posted the prior posting.

Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bremmer.

I'm not very clear. Do you mean when you do the first run, you only raise the pitch of the center strings?

That is to say when the pitch raise is finished, the outer strings would only have gone through one tuning. Would that cause the outer strings to drop pitch faster than the center strings ?

Hi Cashley,

I think Mr. Bremmer does two strip muted fine tunings (the two passes) then the final fine tuning with rubber mutes with the ETD. Maybe he would elaborate on this.

The center string will still have dropped some on every tuning with the strip mute and if the ETD is used, you'll see how much as you go back down the piano. So using the ETD, you'd have to bring the center string back up then tune the two outer strings instead of hoping the center string didn't fall too much and just doing the unisons. A lot more work but it is for a Concert tuning and what the Client pays for... A Quality Tuning.

How's that...?

Of course, after you tune down the piano the strings are still going to fall in pitch because you brought the two outside strings up causing more tension on the frame. So if one rechecks pitch there will still be some changes. I think you could tune all day and still have pitch changes. But this wasn't a pitch raise. It was a ultra fine tuning.

Hi Scott. Another way to do two passes with a strip mute that works too is to tune the center strings, pull the strip mute and do the unisons and then repeat. You will just have to insert the strip mute twice instead of once which is takes very little extra time.

If you do two passes of the center string before pulling in the unisons the center string will still move some. If you do one pass of the center string followed by unisons and then repeat, there will be less movement needed to tune the unisons the second time and the center string will stay put.

I hope you don't mind me adding my two cents. I'm no Bill Bremmer but I've found this method works well when the piano is close or to or at pitch.

Sounds good byron,

And no, I don't mind a bit. In fact the more I read in my study materials and the more I read here the better off I am. Thanks

And I hope Mr. Bremmer didn't think I was insulting or disrespectful by my posting(s). That would be the last thing I'd want to do here or anywhere.

There are a lot of tuners here giving stating 15-20 minutes as the duration for their first rough tuning of a piano that will be tuned a second time right after. In my own experience it might be better to think that the first tuning should take something about 1/3, 1/4 of the time of you standard tuning.

Thus, if you start to learn, and your standard tuning takes three hours, 45-60 min could be ok for the rough 1st tuning.

I myself really tried the 15 min deadline several times, but the piano a lot of times got in worse condition than before. The idea of the first tuning was accomplished time-wise, but it didn't help my second tuning at all Now I'm getting faster in the pitch raise/lowering/stabilization phase (1st tuning) as well, but that too takes practice time.

I worked at a ski factory years ago. On my first day I looked around at the other workers who were effortlessly just flying away at their stations going through their repetitive motions very quickly and efficiently. It seemed so fast to me. Whithin a month or two I noticed that I was going fast too but didn't feel like it.

Piano tuning is repetitive like assembly line work, only much much harder obviously. Once the listening becomes second nature and a feel for pin setting is aquired you get faster. There are also many large and small muscles throughout the body that become stronger. My friend started laughing when she saw me with my shirt off ath the beach. I asked what was so funny. She said look at your arms in the mirror. My right arm is way bigger than my left. I look like a lobster! This is after tuning about ten to fifteen pianos a week for five years. I should have learned to tune with both arms.

Hi Scooters,

You left me more confused than before. Lets keep things simple on a YES or NO basis with less technical terms (such as two passes which I don't understand at all).

(1) Does it mean on the first run the center strings are raised to the appropriate pitch but the outer strings are untouched (muted) ?

(2) Does it mean on the second run both the center strings and outer strings are tuned ？

(3) If (1) and (2) are correct, wouldn't the outer strings drop their pitch more quickly than the center strings ?

There are many ways to skin a cat. You'll never find a one size fits all approach to tuning because there are so many variables. Yes and No answers would be nice but experimenting and evaluating the results is the only way to know. Getting a personalized training program going with Bill Bremmer on Piano World sounds like a bargain but isn't going to work.

I think there's absolutely NO way I could do a 10 to 15, maybe 20-minute rough tuning (pitch raise) on a piano that starts off relatively close to pitch - chances are it would sound worse when I was done than when I started. I've been able to do some floor tunings in 35-45 minutes, though, but I can't maintain a pace like that for very long.

For a piano that is, say, a quarter step (50¢) to a half step (100¢) flat, maybe up to a full step (200¢), I might consider doing a quick pass the first time through. Chances are for something that far off I wouldn't even bother trying to use strips or mutes at all. Question.... would cranking up a string from $1.00 or $2.00 flat to pitch, or maybe up to 25¢ overpull, if it's done very fast (like put the hammer on the pin, play the note once, crank it up (fast enough so that it almost sounds like you play one note then step, not glide to near the proper pitch), play again to verify approximate pitch, remove hammer from pin, all within less than one second (maybe 2 seconds if you count the time switching the hammer from one tuning pin to the next)) potentially be harmful to the string?

It takes me an hour and a half to do a pitch + tuning together. That is at least two passes. If I'm lucky I can do it in an hour and ten minutes. A regular tuning takes me an hour or less. People think I'm crazy for this but I will often spend an hour or more on a floor tuning.
I believe strongly in a two pass tuning. Even when the piano is close I'll do two passes because even if a unison sounds good there still may be some pin setting to do. There may be some inaudible out of tuneness left in the piano after only one pass. With two moderately fast passes I can get into a good pin setting rhythm that is more efficient than trying to nail it once.

The question at the beginning of this post was (what is the usual time frame for a RPT to tune a piano). I'm not a RPT but I have some colleagues that are. One tunes in two hours or more. Another one tunes in 50 minutes. Another one in an hour and a half. Another one has been known to tune in twenty minutes but the customers weren't satisfied with the end result so someone else had to go in to retune the pianos.

What you will find, is that much depends on the skill and technique acquired by any particular technician. If one cannot tune any faster than 2 hours or longer without doing a good job then so be it. That's their speed. If one can tune in 1 hour and do a good job great. That's their speed.

I was taught speed. Speed in pitch raising and fine tuning. Drilled into my head over and over. Can a pianos pitch be raised in under 10 minutes easily? Yes, many of us do it. That leaves you 20 minutes or more for a fine tuning if we are shooting to be done in 30 minutes. There are times where that is all we have available for tuning in some settings due to time constraints on behalf of the school or where ever we are working, so it does come in handy. However, that doesn't mean we do that to each piano either as it takes a lot out of you doing this consistently for 40 years. 35 full time for me. These days, I choose to tune them in about 45 minutes to an hour or so. It is much easier on the body and mind IMO.

My point, is that if we judge a tuner that takes 2 hours to do a job that another can do in half that time well, it isn't fair to either person. There are tuners everywhere that can spend 6 hours or 6 minutes and never do a good job.

My tech (a concert tech) takes 1 hour exactly. He says it takes him about 2 hours to do a concert/recording tuning.

That's about what I spend on a concert tuning as well Howie. 1.5-2 hours depending on when I tuned it last. If it was the day before, maybe an hour or so.

Cool! It's funny how all you guys are working in the same timeframe. Lots of practice!