Lowell Trecartin
Green Mountain Piano Moving • 689 South Barre Road • Barre, Vermont 05641
Associate Member, Piano Technicians Guild
TOLL FREE: 1.866.684.1241 • Office: 802.476.8383

Tuning Your Old Piano

I am often called in to tune an old piano which hasn't been tuned for years.

First I check for any signs that water has gotten inside from someone watering a plant on top. Then I check for broken or spliced strings. I then put rust-breaking lubricant on the top part of the strings (just after they leave the tuning pins and come down over the metal bar above the line of hammers). Then as I come to each string, I ease it backwards first before raising it to pitch. This will break any bond that rust has formed between the string and the metal bar.

In spite of all these precautions, occasionally a string will break. Most often the break occurs in or near the highest octave. This is because the wire is thinner there and the tension greater--around 240-250 pounds per string.

The likelihood of strings breaking is greater when a piano is older than 75 years and hasn't been well cared for. It can even occur in a younger piano that has been subject to a lot of damp--in a cellar, in a church basement, etc. And, the person who now owns the piano most often knows nothing of its history.

If the piano is very rusty and there is already a splice or two, or some missing strings in the high treble, I will tell the customer and suggest that the piano be tuned lower, say to A435 as opposed to the normal A440. This puts less tension on the strings and gives a better chance of the getting the whole piano in tune without breaking strings.

This is just a fact of life when dealing with old pianos. It is a risk you take when you have them tuned. Because old pianos are the kinds of pianos that many of my customers have, I am extremely cautious and careful. I don't want to break a string, because I don't want to fix it. It is a miserable job and hard on the hands. So, when a string does break in the very high treble, I always let them make the call as to fixing it. If it is in the very high treble I will replace the string with a completely new string.

If a string should break in the tenor or bass section, it must be fixed. However, here, it is not advisable to replace the string because the sound will be so very different from the rest of the notes. In this case, I splice the string. More difficult than replacing the short treble string, but much better for the sound of the piano.

Some pianos, especially old Emersons, are, at a certain point in their lives, prone to many broken strings. Then the piano is in trouble. A complete restringing job is very expensive and few old pianos are worth it. But the ones that are--well they just are worth it.

So, if you have an old piano which you have just acquired that hasn't been taken care of, just be aware of what might happen when it is tuned. If a lot of strings break, you need to be prepared to make some hard decisions. If just one or two break, be prepared to pay for fixing them if you want or if they are where they must be fixed to continue using the piano. It is not the technician's fault. Just relate it to another profession: if you call in a carpenter to replace a window in your house and when the carpenter takes out the old one he finds much rotted lumber that must be replaced before the new window can go in, you would not expect to not pay for removing the rot and putting in new lumber--same thing applies here. The carpenter didn't cause the rot, and the piano technician didn't cause the deterioration of the string.

If you want to read about "standard pitch" this is a good place to start: History of Pitch (opens in a new window).

Back to the top!