Piano Tuner West Virginia On Why Tune a Piano If It Is Not Used

As your piano tuner West Virginia and the surrounding areas, I am often asked why to tune a piano if it is not being used. Some background on the design of pianos will help make the answer clearer.

Pianos have over 200 piano strings which have about 150 pounds of tension on each of them when the piano is tuned to the proper pitch. If you multiply 150 times 200, you get over 30,000 pounds of total tension on a wooden instrument. Even though the structure is reinforced with cast iron, the tension is held by wooden parts. A wooden structure cannot maintain that amount of tension indefinitely. Pianos must be tuned every 6 – 12 months, or they drop in pitch too much to be brought back up in a single tuning. If the piano were played during that time, it would put the piano out of tune slightly more, but the major factor is simply time.

You might ask, “So what? Can’t the piano technician put it back in tune after a number of years?” The answer is usually yes, but with extra expense and possible damage to your instrument. There are two types of structures which are typically stressed in that scenario. The most obvious are the strings. It does not stress the strings to be out of tune. The stress to piano strings comes when the tension is increased as they are raised back up the proper pitch.

When strings are tuned to their proper pitch they are set at about 70% of their breaking tension. When strings are raised in pitch, the tension can get dangerously close to the breaking tension. Two aspects of the strings contribute to that. One is the configuration, where only the middle of the strings is heard. This part of the string is called the “speaking length.” At the top of the speaking length is a bearing point through which the string runs in order to reach the tuning pin. As a result of friction at the bearing point, the portion of the string leading to the tuning pin must be at greater tension than the speaking length. The tension on the portion of the string leading to the tuning pin therefore gets close to the breaking tension when the pitch is raised.

There is another contributing factor which will be covered in our next blog post. if you have any questions about pianos or their maintenance, please let us know. We are your West Virginia piano tuning experts, and we provide professional piano services in the surrounding areas as well.