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My amateur tuning ability albeit using an ETD is improving, but my tuning stability is suspect.

My last tuning of my upright was the best I have ever done out of around twenty. (Surely there must be a piano tuners expression for the sensation of a sublime tuning?) However after two weeks it badly needs another tuning. I have no problem to keep on tuning but am concerned that I am missing "a vital ingredient" to my tuning technique.

For a week after my last tuning I enjoyed playing for at least an hour a day. Nothing with fff, but after a further week the unisons are embarrassingly out.

I tune with only a couple of medium-velocity settling strikes noting that the ETD does not indicate a fall or rise. This is an upright so I finish tuning each string with a gentle push or pull toward the piano or towards me to depending on whether I am tuning the string up or down.

I tune the middle string first then mute and aurally mute an outer to tune the other outer to the middle.

To me "setting the pin" is to try to ensure that there is no subsequent overwhelming strain or torque that will cause it to rotate, or reseat, within a "reasonable" time period, e.g. 3 seconds.

I have been amazed at reading here of one practitioner who said that they have returned after a year to find that the piano they had tuned was still "in tune".

"Concert pianos are tuned after every performance" but I know that the retuning is less to do with the previous tuning, but more to do with the response of the piano to the performer's energy.

Can I change my technique to extend the period where I can relish my own tuning?

Ian

It takes practice to develop the feel and touch. I tuned a Wurlitzer spinet that I had last tuned in 2008 yesterday, and it only required minor touch-up. People think that they can tune a piano well after just a few tries, but that is no more likely than that they could play a Rachmaninoff concerto after a few weeks of playing the piano.

Other circumstances also make a difference. I tuned a piano recently which I had last tuned in 2004, and it was much more out of tune, but it is situated in a window that gets afternoon sun.

I don't know how to respond properly to your statements.

Most hearsay opinions, including those I have read here, say that a domestic piano should require tuning two or three times a year.

Your "nine year gap requiring a "minor" touch up" (is that a pun ) leaves me speechless.

I'm trying to imagine, e.g Chopin Piano Concerto No 2, or Beethoven Symphony no6 "Pastoral" played on a piano that has not been tuned for nine years.

I never said that I think I can tune after just a few tries, but just asked for some guidance. In hindsight, I should not have used the term "Great tuning" in my subject line

Ian

Ian, there are so many possible variables. It's impossible to say definitively what might be coming into play in the case of your piano.

David,

I am also a serious amateur photographer going back 60 years for both taking and processing my own images.

Analysis is a regular process for me and this includes my new hobby of tuning. In this forum I enjoy all feedback to help me progress.

So I don't seek a solution, just to hope for more pointers to better results.

thanks,

Ian

Once you hear a unison that you feel sounds in tune, slightly wiggle your lever on the pin. If it moves, it was not properly set.

Ian, I don't go back quite as far as you with photography, but not that far off!

I taught darkroom stuff for years in a large Further Education College. As a young teenager in the school camera club I used to love the smell of Patterson Acutol and Aculux (not in a volatile solvent sniffing kind of way, just the pleasant aroma, that none of the other developers had.

How stable is humidity in the piano room? Have you employed Mario Igrec's recommendation to apply Protek CLP to all bearing/rendering places? And M. Poulin's tip above.

Let us know how things progress!

P.S. (O.T!) since my car crash in October '13 my Nikon D80 has had some faults, and as it's now long in the tooth and not worth repairing (can pick up the bodies for £100 on Ebay now) am thinking it might be time to replace. Technology has moved on. Am thinking of mirrorless Compact System Camera like Fuji X-T1. What you think?
On the Granny's Piano page of my website, there is a photo of my late Aunt in the early 1940s. I have found the original glass place negative, and when I am back home in summer (working abroad just now) I will scan it and see what can be done with it.

Jean,

Ah the days when I waited to see the image appear. Until that point in time it was all in my mind. Today, I get disillusioned so quickly when browsing the preview screen....

......back to the keyboard, and I want the always-in-tune sound of the classical performances I hear on the radio.

However so much worse I would feel if I had the aural ability of my friend who sitting beside me at a live Bach organ recital saying "that E is so flat".

How does our mind decide that a piano is sufficiently out of tune that a tuning must be done immediately? Is it one string or many?

How do Sitar players decide with so many strings and quarter tones?

I need to again read the book "Music and the Mind!"

Ian

David,

Well well, so we have something else in common! I have just bought a Nikon D810 moving on from my Nikon D300s. I had held back from "moving up" to full frame (for those unfamiliar it's like moving from my good upright to a 6ft 6" grand). We might continue our photography discussion by PM (can we here?)

Yes Protec CLP used (so expensive!) on V bar, top pins but not the bottom. As you know humidity does not vary too much in Scotland neither is home temperature likely to cause short term and permanent detuning.

The worst flattening is in the upper register but the stretch seemed fine when last tuned. I have found that the torque required to tune this area is significantly less than for the middle register. I have often wondered what the proportion of torque is used to overcome stiction, as against the torque required to balance speaking and unspeaking string tension in this upper register?

Why would strings with less tension be more susceptible to flattening?

Ian

If a whole register is changing in pitch, your problem may be more humidity related than tuning technique related.

Do you have humidity control in the piano?

not so much less in treble but less friction, friction help the tuning to hold, too.

As I wrote you , never tune by turning the pin counter clockwise, only up. as the grip in the block is "natural" and due to the pin retained by the wood surface, not only by the elasticity of the wood, the surface is oriented while we turn the pin, when turning backward there is damage to the bed so it should be avoided to the possible.

pin setting is better with more tension as the wire provide the strain that keep the pin in its 'set' posture.

lubing the bearing on a vertical : counterproductive, the wire is very near, only if the pressure bar is highly dented or the strings extremely rusty, and even then.

never done in Europe for what I know, unnecessary mostly ( on grand pianos eventually but then the friction is way higher)

concentrate on the pin, the pin tells you all you need to know about what the wire is doing.

the blows that are going to the pin when a note is played strong are transmitted by longitudinal waves, friction or no.

hence the necessity for the wire to hold the pin well tense. it is a a part of the same system, not a separate portion.

make a video of your technique and you will certainly have useful comments. mine is simple : take maximum control en all elongations and deformation by proceeding slowly enough.
if not logical when time is limited it create a huge gain in time by the understanding of what happens in the mechanics and optimal tactile learning.

Hi Ian, about humidity what's important is IMHO to measure the RH inside, where the piano is. Even if the RH outside stays about the same, since you live in a country where heat is needed inside homes in winter, the RH around the piano might vary quite a bit. For example, at the end of spring, as heat is gradually not needed inside anymore, RH will rise and can disturb the tuning, unless the piano is equipped with a DC and/or in a room with a climate control system.

it have been said that HR was stable , that is what I understood anyway

and iH have the least influence on treble, it is in fact the portion of the piano where the tuning moves mostly because the piano is played strong, and the pin setting is not strong enough. in the soprano region, mostly, the highest portion of the soundboard generally but also a portion that is more stiff than mediums and low mediums, where detuning due to iH changes is the most apparent.

in high treble it is quite common that only unison have to be rebuild, without any pitch loss,on yearly tuning

if the piano is stable , little motion in the soprano but as the mediums moves much it sound as if they are out of tune.

I may say I had more lowering in that region before I learned to set the pins "actively " (for lack of a better term)

Here is what you have posted:

Strings are stable after tuning with moderate blows.
Unisons are horribly out after a week.
Humidity is stable.

There are only two possible reasons for this:
Tuning pins are loose and/or you are leaving the pin " high" in the hole.
Leaving the pin high in the hole means your final tuning motion is clockwise and/or "away" from the string.
Examples of "away" motions: Upright, clockwise, 9:00. Grand, counter-clockwise, 9:00. Etc.

When the pin is left high in the hole, it may be stable at the tuning, but over time, will settle down into the hole. This settling will drop the non speaking length tension which may result in the tension differential across the upper bearing points, to exceed friction, resulting in string slippage.

There are no other explanations, from an engineering point of view, given your descriptions.

Possibly loose tuning pins, possibly faulty "pin setting", weather changes, etc. There is another point that hasn't been mentioned, unless I missed something.

How far off pitch was the piano before you started tuning? If the pitch was off by more than 8-10 cents (more than 2 beats per second for us aural tuners) then the piano would require at least two passes. First pass to get it close and "up to pitch", second pass to fine tune.

Failure to follow this procedure can result in a great tuning that just doesn't last.

Can you elaborate on this statement?

If you want to make sure a pin is set, an "ff" blow might be a good test of it. I have known of some tuners who were very heavy handed when it came to test blows. And for some pianos, it is almost required. (I've tuned some Steinway uprights that were very stubborn in the string rendering department and short of heavy test blows, they really didn't do well for me.)

Humidity and the change of seasons have been the biggest things that take out a tuning, at least for me. In the rare cases where a piano had a very exacting environmental control, they were wonderful to take care of. They held their tuning marvelously.

You did not indicate where the piano was pitch wise when you started in other words where was A 4 against a tuning fork or the ETD ? Perhaps the piano needed some pitch work before the fine tuning to get it in the ball park and even out the tension. Also what brand of ETD do you have ?

Since you are in Scotland do you have high humidity in the tuning scenario ?

if you are serious about tuning pianos it would be a good idea to get some instruction so you can develop good hammer technique. Keep in mind you are dealing with an instrument that has tons of tension, over 200 strings and it does not want to stay in tune. there are so many factors at play including the condition of the instrument, tightness of the tuning pins, wood movement it is a miracle the beast can be tamed

I believe the OP stated that the piano was tuned many times with no problem and just recently did not stay.

The comment of the gentle push may refer to "settling the pin down in the hole" as one tech explained to me.

NSL analysis shows clearly how and why and when this works.

Consider these points in NSL analysis:

NSL = non speaking length (string between pin and v-bar/agraffe)
The NSL tension changes BEFORE the string slips on the v-bar/agraffe due to friction.
There are a range of NSL tensions where the string does not slip.
The range "narrows" during hard blows due to a reduction in the coefficient of friction.
The tuning pin bends and twists during tuning and unbends and untwists after the lever force is removed.

Now consider one situation, raising pitch on an upright.
NSL tension rises.
Then the string slips.
The range of stable NSL tensions rise with the NSL tension, the NSL tension being at the top limit of the range.
Once the desired pitch is achieved, lever force is removed and the pin untwists and unbends.
Untwisting lowers NSL tension.
Unbending may lower, raise, or not affect NSL tension, depending on the lever angle and how the tuner was holding the lever.
Nothing may need to be done if the NSL tension is nicely in the middle of the stable NSL tension range.

However, if the NSL is low in the range, a hard blow will cause the range to narrow, and that may cause the NSL tension to become outside the stable range, and slippage occurs.

One way to confirm that the NSL tension is not near the bottom or edge of the stable NSL tension range, is to use hard test blows.

Another way is to gently push or massage the pin in the direction of the string (or even away from it). This will cause the NSL tension to change slightly, and if it is near the edge, the string will slip. The "push" confirms stability without a test blow.