Piano Tuning

My tuning fee is $145 if your piano has been tuned to standard pitch within the past two years.

If it has been longer than two years, your piano has probably fallen below pitch and will need additional work before a tuning will hold. Call me at 772-610-3700 with a rough idea of how long it has been, and I will explain your options and the cost before I come out.

Most manufacturers recommend tuning at least twice a year, and that is the right baseline for a piano in a Florida home.

A piano used for teaching, recording or daily practice often benefits from three or four visits a year. A piano that is played rarely still needs two, because it goes out of tune from humidity change whether anyone plays it or not.

A pitch raise is a corrective pass that brings a piano which has dropped flat back up to standard pitch, A440, so that a fine tuning can hold.

Your piano likely needs one if it has gone more than two years without tuning. As tension falls across all the strings, the piano settles at the lower load. Tuning each string directly to pitch changes the total tension so much that the strings set first go flat again before the job is finished. The first pass therefore overshoots deliberately, and a second pass fine-tunes.

About an hour and a half for a piano that has been in regular service.

A piano needing a pitch raise takes longer, often two to three hours, because it requires more than one pass. If I find a repair or an adjustment worth making while I am there, I will tell you what it is and what it costs, and you decide.

I use both. Electronic tuning equipment measures each string precisely, and the ear judges how the intervals actually sound together in the room.

Neither alone produces the best result. The machine gets a piano close quickly and consistently; the ear makes the final judgments about how a particular instrument should be stretched and balanced. I have used this hybrid technique tuning for major orchestras and touring performers.

Almost never. Most neglected pianos can be brought back to standard pitch and played with pleasure again.

A piano that has sat for a decade will need a pitch raise, and sometimes a follow-up visit a few weeks later once the strings have settled at the new tension. Very old instruments occasionally break a string during the process, and I will tell you beforehand if I think yours is a candidate. Call me with the brand, the age and roughly how long it has been, and I can usually predict what your piano will need.

Yes. I am available for concert and studio tuning throughout the Treasure Coast.

I have years of experience in the most demanding situations, where there is one chance to get it right before the audience arrives, and I have received numerous compliments on the quality of my work from performing artists. That experience is available to churches, schools, recording studios and venues in this area.

Yes, considerably. Humidity change is the main reason pianos here go out of tune faster than the same instrument would elsewhere.

The soundboard is wood under tension, and it swells and shrinks as the moisture in the room changes. Keeping the room reasonably stable, and keeping the piano away from air conditioning vents, exterior doors and direct sun, does more good than anything else an owner can control between tunings.

Clear anything sitting on top of the piano, and give me a reasonably quiet house for about ninety minutes.

Tuning is done by listening, so televisions and vacuum cleaners make the work harder. I will need to open the piano, so a little clearance around it helps. There is nothing you need to do to the instrument itself.

Yes. I provide in-home piano tuning in Vero Beach, Sebastian, and Fort Pierce.

Vero Beach is my principal location and where most of my work is. If you are outside that area, please call anyway — if I cannot help you, I will tell you who can.