I’ve just noticed that I haven’t written anything about pitch raising pianos that are well below concert pitch (thanks to a Sheffield piano tuning customer for reminding me). Usually I’ll do a pitch raise if the piano is more than 5 cents below concert pitch, which involves tuning the piano twice. This is the most common scenario, and so far in my piano tuning career I have dealt with pianos that are a semitone below concert pitch by tuning it to itself. However, if the whole piano is more than 30 cents below concert pitch, and you want a pitch raise rather than a standard piano tuning, it will require 3 tunings to get it to stay at concert pitch. Two of them will be pitch corrections to get it up to pitch, both of which will be rough tunings taking an hour each. The third tuning will be a fine tuning to make sure every note on the piano is nicely in tune and at concert pitch. I haven’t mentioned anything so far on this website as I hadn’t made any huge pitch raises when I first starting piano tuning around Sheffield. Most pianos over 30 cents below concert pitch are old pianos well past their prime that most often haven’t been looked after, so I usually suggested tuning it to itself or tuning the piano a little bit sharper each time so that it remains stable. All of these customers seemed happy with the results as the piano sounded much better than it did before and at least was in tune with itself.

– Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield