A note on piano tuning devices/electronic piano tuners

When hiring a piano tuner, you may notice that he/she is carrying a piano tuning device, tools that are becoming increasingly popular with piano tuners as technology advances. This often causes confusion amongst the public as they tend to assume that these devices tune the piano for you and allow the piano tuner to coast through the job. Unfortunately for us, these are only tools that allow for even greater precision when tuning and there are still other parts of the job that take years of practice to master (such as setting the pins and tuning the unisons, not to mention all the repair jobs that come up unexpectedly). A qualified piano tuner will be able to tune accurately by ear but nobody is perfect and occasionally even an experienced professional will make subtle mistakes.

For the customer who thinks they could use a piano tuner device themselves to tune their own piano, I’m afraid the least expensive I’ve found cost £2,000. Even if you’ve got a good ear for music you will not be able to tune your own piano without working on the technique for several years, so until they invent a machine that can tune a piano automatically a professional piano tuner will always be needed.

 

– Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.