Owning a grand piano is considered a luxury. The price of a grand piano is really something only the elite can afford. Not unless you have been handed down a piano by virtue of inheritance, you cannot seem to own one if you are not filthy rich. Now that you have a beautiful piano, what is it going to take to keep your piano tuned?
Added to the price of owning a piano is the responsibility of keeping it in good shape and literally, the piano must stay tuned at all times to retain the good sounding quality. Otherwise, if your piano goes out of tune, you really defeat the purpose of owning one.
One of the major concerns of piano owners is how to keep it in tune at all times. Remember that a piano is a stringed instrument, just like the guitar, it goes out of tune every now and then especially when the strings get loose.
This is the major problem getting into the heads of most piano owners, the dilemma of tuning their piano and the fear of ballooning service fee from piano tuners.
But is it really that expensive to have your piano tuned?
Well, if you haven’t tried tuning your piano you wouldn’t really know the best price for doing such.
Should the service for tuning a piano is quite pocket draining then I wouldn’t have to submit my piano for a piano tuning service as well. I will just have it there as a display.
Let’s try to find out the real cost for tuning the piano. We are mostly scared of the things that we don’t know. Let’s try to browse on the different piano services and compare the prices. We will see if the piano tuning cost is worth the budget and priced just right for the kind of service they provide us.
On average, you really have to know that piano tuning is part of your responsibility as a piano owner. It should be done at least once a year.
There are approximately 230 strings in every piano. Each string is individually stretched, tightened or pulled. It has to have at least 150 to 200 pounds of pressure in each stretch depending on its gauge of length and thickness.
Piano manufacturers would recommend a 3 to 4 times of piano tuning yearly. But if you are not using your piano regularly, once a year is enough.
There are some primary reasons why we need to tune a piano. Remember that the piano is made up of wooden frames. When humidity rises, the wood swells which affects the quality of sound given off by the piano. This is why the piano needs constant tuning.
Now the cost. Piano tuning is not as expensive as you think off. The longer your piano exceeds the manufacturer’s recommended tuning requires, the more expensive it will be for you to cost for your piano tuning.
If you want to save more money, after buying your piano have it tuned regularly as required by the manufacturer.
Another thing, remember that tuning and repair are two different things. Tuning means the piano needs adjustment on the strings to make it sound vibrant again. Repair means you have to replace some parts in the piano that already goes off.
Here are some of the tips you can make to ensure that you won’t go wrong in doing your piano tuning services.
1. Choose an experienced piano tuning service expert. An expert will do a quick inspection of your piano. He would tell you if your piano needs repair or just a simple tuning. Don’t worry diagnostic test on your unit is usually free. Repairs are usually done if your piano is really that very old or has been into some water or smoke damage.
So if you have just purchased the unit a year or two, don’t believe that it needs a repair. Not unless you have submerged your piano in flood.
2. Piano tuning and pitch raise are again two different things. A piano will start dropping pitch if it has been out of tune for a very long time. So it needs to be raised before you can tune it. It happens more often during the winter season. That is why it is highly recommended to do the piano tuning every year.
How Much Does It Cost to Get A Piano Tuned?
3. Now the price. A real good piano tuning from an expert piano tuner would cost around $75 per hour. Yes, they charge by the hour. That is the starting price of a simple piano tuning. This is the basic charge for starters, once the technician becomes expert he begins charging more for his services. The average length of service for piano tuning is around 1 and half hour.
In the U.S., the average cost would be around a $100 per hour. That depends also on the expertise of the technicians and the name brand they carry with them. The price of $150 to $250 per hour on piano tuning is quite too much, no expert technicians would ask that much.
Well, maybe they can charge that much if they owned a special instrument used only for grand pianos, the Nord Stage 2 SW73.
There you have it, some ideas on how much a piano tuning would cost nowadays. Give importance to things of value like your grand piano or even if it is just an ordinary piano, we considered it as an heirloom we can hand down from generation to generation.
When Should You Get Your Piano Tuned After Moving Your Piano?
We get this question often and our recommendation is to call a professional piano tuner in your area after 2 weeks. This allows the piano to acclimate to your new home and for the “keys” to settle. If you are in the Los Angeles area, we just made a post about the best 3 piano tuners in LA. We will be reviewing and finding other piano tuners in for all our piano moving locations that we have partners in.