Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum tuning hammer for a Mason Hamlin grand?

Congrats. Happy to hear we have this good fortune in common. I love my Mason Hamlin almost as much as my girl friend. At least that's what I have to say in her presence.

And who knows how good I'll get at tuning. It's simply something I am learning to do and having fun doing.

I should say, I understand the reaction I have gotten here. It's OK. I get that tuners have put a huge amount of time and effort into learning their trade.

Neil

I can't imagine that using a student hammer will actually damage a piano. If anything, the student hammer will take the bigger beating due to its cheap material and construction. Has anyone of us here actually damaged a piano using a student hammer?

And using an extension lever is entirely unnecessary. The important thing is to have a hammer that has a clear path, is tall enough, and is comfortable to use.

I gave up extension hammers years ago due to their heavy weight. I'll never buy one again. Using a rigid, light-weight hammer allows you to feel the pin and the string better. You are much better connected to the string and you have much less fatigue to deal with. A pear-shaped handle is best. I use a Jahn non-extension pear handle.

And 'flag poling' is extremely effective for fine tuning - if done correctly. It settles the string and the pin at the same time. It increases speed and accuracy for a skilled tuner. The tuning pins are being twisted as you tune the piano. Learn to use the twisting to your advantage. Holding the hammer parallel to the strings gives the best advantage for this.

This technique does not harm pianos. I have been tuning some pianos now for almost 30 years and the tuning pins are still very tight.

The previous suggestion to hold the hammer at 12:00 give or take an hour is a perfectly fine place to start. If your body needs a better position in order to accomplish the task, that is an individual adjustment that the technician determines for himself.

The most important issues are that you listen - LISTEN - to the piano and feel the string and tuning pin as you adjust the strings. It takes months or years to get the coordination down to a fine skill. When you can tune a piano from start to finish in about an hour, and manage to lock in the frequencies with good stability, it is a very satisfying feeling to have.

For those of us professional tuners with hundreds of satisfied clients (who try other tuners only to come back to us again and again), we experience a lifetime of confirmation that our skills are the correct ones to use. After several decades, we learn that our technique delivers the best possible results without harming the piano.

Start with the student lever if you want to. Buy a better one if you're going to continue your quest to become a skilled tuner. But don't expect perfect results unless you become a full time tuner and are willing to devote years to hone your craft.

I came across a cheap hammer with a bad tip that left ridges on the tuning pins. Yes, there are hammers that can damage pianos.

Thanks Randy.

I enjoyed reading your post. Tuning does sound like a great career. And I appreciate the lever technique tips.

If you are ever in Seattle, please look me up.

Neil

Good info, this is the kind of thing I need to learn about.

I plan to buy the best I can afford- maybe a Fugan. I need to know what size tip to buy for my Mason.

Right now I am assuming #2 since my impression is that is most common.

It makes sense that the tighter the tip on the pin the better. I see the pins are tapered.

I have also read somewhere that I want the tip to be near the coil but not touching it. On this student hammer I have the tip ends up about 3/16 above the coils.

Neil

In all cases it is not the hammer that does the damage.
When poor quality is combined with inexperience the risk increases dramatically.
Always buy quality.
I have 4 hammers and for each I have all tip sizes and extensions available. Neither is a Faulk or Fujan.
There will never be one hammer tip combination that fits all situations.

That makes sense.

My first student hammer was kept in the workshop and used from time to time while my good hammer was in my tool kit in the truck.

I continued to use the student hammer for chip tuning and non-tuning work in the shop. It never damaged pins, but eventually the tip failed. It literally cracked wide open and became worthless. I kept it and showed it at a PTG meeting in Denver.

Exhibit 1 - A cheap tuning hammer that fails after 20 years of use. We got a kick out of that one.

Yes, start with a #2 tip. My guess is that it's the only one you will ever use.

Before I bought my first grand piano about 4+ years ago, a 1915 M&H A, I had a Japanese upright for about 15 years. I knew absolutely nothing about tuning a piano. The upright had a Pianocorder as well as the M&H A. That Pianocorder was playing the the grand every day, and the piano would not stay in tune for very long...so I called the pro-tuner in..he did a great job.....a few weeks later, piano was not in tune, for my ear. I asked him about learning to tune, in fact he suggested it after he came back to tune it again and again. I bought an ETD and with a little help from him, started to tune. 4 1/2 years later, I have broken only 1 string, and it was on a friends upright that had all rusty stings, and it was the last string in the treble....lol...murphy's law.

I have found the most difficult thing to master is the pin-setting.....To get those pins to not wander. Thank heavens for the improvements in ETD's, otherwise I might not have been able to do it on my own. I plan to take some lessons from the pro's to get this pin setting better.

I use a Fujan hammer most of the time.

For those not familiar with my postings, here are a few of my tunings on my 1925 Mason & Hamlin BB. They are not perfect, but they are pretty good considering I am not a pro-tuner.

Bottom line, it IS possible to learn to tune your own piano.

"The Age of Innocence" Reyburn Cyber Tuner OCT5 Stretch, Normalized in Audacity http://www.box.net/shared/hagt0fk2ly

"The Age of Innocence" Stopper Tuning, Corrected in Audacity. http://www.box.net/shared/s4huo9y1pm

"Dancing in the Dark" http://www.box.net/shared/eb4bmh0uoa
"Yours and Mine" 1930's Fox Trot http://www.box.net/shared/f6sdscfus8
"Il Postino" Theme http://www.box.net/shared/1qifx1ep3p
"Out of Africa" http://www.box.net/shared/1qifx1ep3p
"IF You Knew Susie" 1920's Fox Trot http://www.box.net/shared/e2isp8k8u0/1/31495054/327262276
"Somewhere in Time" http://www.box.net/shared/g63xlxj4og

Hi Neil,

I am not a tuner (yet). But like you I am bound and determined to learn. Personally, I think using some basic common sense with a basic understanding of leverage (ie incorrectly used leverage of the hammer can damage a pin) will keep you safe from any chance of doing any damage. Piano's seem to be pretty solid instruments, from what I can tell. You already mentioned the importance of moving the hammer and the pin in the same plane. That with very small movements should get you the results you wants WRT chnaging the pitch / beats slightly. As far as the technical side of guessing beat rates and setting the temperment ... well ... theres no quick and easy road there. I think I have seen most of the YouTube vids on tuning now and have bought several books on it. I am fortunate in having a junker baby grand to hone my (lack of) skills on. I wish I could get someone to tutor me for an hour or two for 100 bucks on tuning, it would be money well spent!!

It was my understanding that you should have some play between the hammer and the pin (ie not a super snug fit) so that you can kinda rock the hammer while setting the pin? It also makes small movements of the pin easier and more accurate? Maybe a tech can confirm this technique.

Just out of curiosity will you be using an ETD to start your tuning?. I am using TuneLab (free download) as a training aid and just out of curiosity. It's kinda cool, but I want to be an aural tuner with the ETD as a backup. Tuning is an interesting field with no end to perfecting it. I am gonna take the plunge and do the Randy Potter course starting in the new year.


Cheers


Tony

Hi Tony,

And thanks to all who have participated in this thread today. I am liking the spirit of it now.

And thanks to Grandpianoman for posting your recordings. Hopefully I will have some to share at some point.

So, Tony,

Yes, I will be using an ETD. I purchased Verituner for my Ipaq 210. It downloaded and installed on it just fine. I did that just a few days ago and haven't yet had time to work with it. But so far I am quite impressed with it.

My old friend Dean who is a tuner used Verituner to tune my Mason right after I trailered it home from Colorado last Fall. I was quite impressed with Verituner then and I liked the way Dean and Verituner made my piano sound.

I also tried Tunelab which worked fine for me really. There was just too much movement in it's phase display for my liking. Plus I already knew I liked Verituner's capabiities, so I decided to go for it. But I did have success with Tunelab. I got about half of the piano tuned with it last week.

Given the above, I would agree with anyone that at least understanding what is going on is really helpful. I am also studying Arthur Reblitz's excellent book on the subject. It is well written and easily understood. I truely am not sure I would have the patience to listen for beats to tune intervals. But I think it could be fun to master that too. One of the future features of Verituner, according to the web site, will be that it may end up having the ability to count the beats for you. ( This is Verituner Pocket I am talking about. The Verituner 100 already does that but costs around $1800.) Anyway, that could be a great learning tool to help learn beat counting.

I have started a Yahoo group for folks like us that are just starting, want to share anything about any brand of ETD or talk about these basic lever technique type of things.
Here is a link to it- http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/DIYPianotuning/?yguid=74281353

If that doesn't work, just search on DIY Piano Tuning in Yahoo groups. I have not set it up to require approval yet, so it should be quite easy to join. So please do join and we can help each other out. Tuners who would be friendly to our cause are quite welcome also.

Thanks,

Neil

I never did quite understand that part of the Reblitz book. Nobody but nobody ever tunes with the handle of the lever hanging out over the keys!....do they?
In the book he does mention that six o'clock on an upright is different than six o'clock on a grand.

From my perspective, twelve o'clock is from where I am sitting, not from which way the hammer handle is in relation to the strings direction. At a vertical twelve o'clock is with the handle sticking straight up away from the strings direction. On a grand 12 o'clock is with the handle is straight back toward the tail going WITH the direction of the strings. I don't know if it makes much difference, other than one way is possible and the other is not.....for me anyway.

So for grand tuning, Reblitz's 5 o'clock is actually 11 o'clock so I don't think you need to get a super tall extension to get over the stretcher.

Thanks for addressing this subject about what Reblitz wrote. I think it would be possible to use his method, but the fact is that you would have to put a long tip extension on your lever to clear the wood above the keys. (Sorry, could someone tell me what to call that?) So, in using this method, you may avoid pin bending forces by having the handle at that position and then introduce some other kind of side force on the pin since you have this long, say 3 inch in the case of my Mason Hamlin, tip- tip extension combo.

I guess the reason I thought it could have been worth figuring out was that it seemed to make sense that you can sit on the piano bench and tune with a relatively relaxed posture. it just seems like leaning over the pin block so that you can get the lever handle at the 12, 1, 2 O'clock position is a bit awkward.

But now I am concluding that is what I will need to figure out how to do. I do want to keep the tip length shortish and the head angle low. I realize this is most likely old hat for you tuners. You have found a posture and a way of doing it that works for you and I'm sure I will too.

Am I wrong, would a piano made differently with lower wood in that area perhaps create more followers of Reblitz's lever method?

Neil

I have his book here. I will quote it directly-

" You will bend the pins the least if you keep the handle of the tuning lever approximately parallel to the strings, extending away from them. As you look at the tuning pins in a vertical piano, orient the lever in a position around one o'clock if you are right handed. , or eleven o'clock if you are a lefty. Looking down at the tuning pins while sitting directly in front of a grand, orient the lever somewhere around five o'clock."

A few paragraphs latter he says

" For best control of the lever, rest your elbow firmly on the pinblock , cabinet, or other convenient part of the piano. With your elbow resting on the piano, your wrist and elbow are the pivot points for your hand. With your elbow hanging in midair, your shoulder is a pivot point, decreasing control."

Then in his first tuning exercise he confirms that he is pulling the handle in a counterclockwise direction to lower pitch and raising pitch by pushing on the lever.

So, am I wrong or what? When I try what he is saying, the lever handle is over the keys on my grand.

Neil

Damn, aural tuning is our only authentic signature to the music. Using tuning software may get you to the frequency. But does not show you how to set the pin or the string? Does it replicate your natural stretch? Never.
Get a real education. Try to get to North Bennet St. School in Boston, or the University of Western Ontario, the Chicago School of Piano Technology, and learn the entire trade. You can't learn this stuff from the mail. Sorry Randy.

Reblitz is a good book. Can you learn the trade from this? NOOOOOO.

Much to the dismay of our peers. The direction of the hammer is secondary to the ability to set the pins. Flag poling aside, set the string, set the pin. Bang and test the keys....hard!

Oh ya, don't have the patience to listen to beats? You really don't have a clue. Piano tuning is completely about beats. If you want to be a true piano technician you have to undestand that pianos are not tuned by pitch. They are tuned by frequency, by beats. Anything else is ignorant and completely lazy and without ART!It takes the same amount of time to learn our trade as it does to learn to play the piano. If you think you can take a shortcut to the art, to the trade.....forget it. You will always be a novice.

OK, I'm a novice. when it comes to tuning pianos I'm pretty ignorant, lazy hmm I wish I had some free time to enjoy. Did I say I wanted to become a piano tuner for anyone else? Anywhere here? What does it matter to you what my piano sounds like? This is for me. If you want to be rude, please go elsewhere.

Another thing here, read this whole thread, have I not given tuners the respect you deserve? I think the answer to that is yes.

Tranesong, it's really tough to respond to you when you sound mad. But maybe you can tell us what seems to be really bothering you if you insist. I'm serious. This is not retorical.

Neil