Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Tuning an old piano to A440

It is always a good idea to take the time no matter how sick and tired of it we get to explain and to warn the customer of potential breaks. I.e., string breakage & harp breakage prior to tuning. Normally I usually do not raise pitch on most new client's pianos without first explaining that possibility. Depends on the piano and its age. Whenever I don't, I can be guaranteed, something will break. It's just Murphy's law. He likes me a lot!

Yeah, and I've always wondered who the heck that "Murphy" fellow was.

check this out:
http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html

Interesting. Dad always taught me if you don't want to drop a screw or something else into the bottom of the piano, concentrate on it and what you are doing and do it slowly. It works most of the time. Didn't work for my dad the first time he did it though. He glanced away for a split second and BLOOP down to the bottom it went and of course, I laughed saying, what's that again dad?

The dropped screw that does NOT hit bottom is the one I don't like.

Hehehe, thanks! Who knew?

Mrs. Murphy made the chowder with overalls in it.

Pianos do not normally drop nearly a full tone unless there is a serious structual problem, It may also have been stored in a hostile envirement for many years and not tuned. Only a qualified tuner can decide whether this piano is capable of being tuned to A440
"Old baby grand" is not enought infomation about this piano!!!
Robin Stevens

Definitely, especially when it means laboriously removing a drop action and shaking the thing to dislodge the screw!

Why do those screws find their way under the butt and behind the jack and standing on end, invisible from the front??? Acrosonic nightmares...

Murphy put it there Sam! Just for us!

Murphy? Wasn't he the guy that invented the drop action? Plastic elbows? Lesters? I believe he was one of the founders of the distinguished piano service company, Jury And Rig, with representitives in every population center world wide. I always loved their motto: "If it's JuryRigged, you know it's quality."

90% of the pianos I tune, need pitch raises. And in three years I have only found 3 of them which couldn't be raised to pitch, because the strings broke, I mean bass strings. (When treble strings break I replace them, they are relatively cheap, the most extreme was a Knabe old upright in which I replaced 19 high treble strings).

I have now tuned almost 500 pianos, that is nearly 450 pitch raises and only 3 pianos tuned flat from 440.

So, generally speaking, I always put them to 440, nevertheless, there are important exceptions and one must be carefull to not damage a customer's piano.