I daughter broke a treble string during practice. The technician replaced the string and tuned the note. He warned me that it would go out of tune very soon. He stopped by two days later to tune the note again. And it was out of tune again soon after. My piano is due for the regular tuning soon. When should I have the piano tuned? Will the note get out of tune soon after? How many tunings will it take for that note to stay in tune?

It can take up to a year, or 5-6 tunings, until a new string attains the tuning stability of its neighbors. This is normal. Ask your technician to tune it slightly sharp and to mute it with a piece of felt. That way you won't be bothered by the pitch dropping. A few months down the road, at a regular tuning, the mute can be removed and the string should have settled down for the most part.

A year. Ouch. I had a bass string break this summer. It went out of tune immediately (= next day) after being replaced. Two weeks later my tech came back and tuned it again. That was about a month ago. It seemed okay for about 3 weeks but is now flat again. I was going to wait it out until the end of October, which is when my regular tuning is scheduled and I need to change my Dampp-Chaser pads. I guess I was hoping it would at that point be stable enough to last six months... but it sounds like maybe it won't.

Monica, I'll be glad to trade you my old stable "A". It may even take a "few years" to stabilize...lol

If the tech is careful about getting the coils tight and everything in place properly, it should be reasonably stable after about three months, if it is pulled up to pitch a couple of times in the interim. It will still go out of tune faster than the rest of the piano for some time after that, but the worst will be over by then.

If it is a bad tech who does not do that, then it takes a lot longer.

I learned a neat trick from one of the concert technicians at Steinway concerning replacement strings.

After you have replaced the string, including seating at the bridge and termination points and stretching the string, tune the string to pitch and rub both segments of the replacement string with a hammershank until you can smell the hammershank getting hot. This causes the string to go slightly sharp and the pitch seems to stabilize much faster. I do this on every replacement string at the University where I work and it eliminates about two tunings until the pitch stabilizes.

It doesn't sound like it should work, but it really does. Try it, you might like it.

Tom

I should have said that this only works on treble string, not bass strings.

Tom

More likely you are stretching the string beyond the elastic limit, which is not a good thing to do.

By slightly sharp, I mean a cent or two.

Tom

Monica - bass strings stabilize faster than treble strings. You might be ok at the next tuning.

*phew* [wipes brow] Thanks, Bob!

I know I risk a severe tongue-lashing for suggesting it, but if you are comfortable doing it, I would just keep the new string in tune yourself. In the case of a string replacement this winter for us, it would have driven me nuts to have had to wait for a tuner to do a few seconds of work to keep our vertical in tune.

The two techs who work on our pianos are OK with this (and have even given me some pointers).