Tuning
A Piano Wants Tuning Twice a Year in Denmark
A tuning takes about ninety minutes in your home, and small repairs are done on the same visit.
- Upright
- 975 DKK
- Grand
- 1,150 DKK
- Booked
- 2 to 3 weeks ahead
Prices
What a Tuning Costs
- Tuning an upright975 DKKWithin Aarhus municipality, travel included.
- Tuning a grand1,150 DKKGrands take a little longer, because the action comes forward for the dampers.
- Pitch raise+450 DKKAn extra rough pass first, for a piano that has not been tuned for years and sits well below A 440.
- Small repairs on the same visit250 DKKPlus parts. A sticking key, a buzzing damper, a broken string.
- Travel beyond Aarhus municipality3.50 DKK per kmEast Jutland only, up to 60 km from the workshop, counted both ways.
In Ida's words
Why Twice a Year
People think a piano goes out of tune because it is played, and it does a little, but mostly it goes out of tune because Denmark has two climates and the piano lives through both of them: from October the radiators come on and the air in a living room gets as dry as a biscuit, the soundboard shrinks a fraction, the crown flattens, the strings lose tension and the whole piano sinks flat, unevenly, worst in the middle, and then in April the windows open and the damp comes back and the board swells and everything rises again, so a piano tuned in March is out by June and a piano tuned in September is out by Christmas, and the only way to keep it close is to tune it once after the heating goes on and once after it goes off, which is why I suggest October and May to everyone who asks, and why I have stopped arguing with the ones who only want it done before Christmas, because at least then it sounds right for the carols.
Ida
The part that moves
A Turn the Width of a Hair
Every string is wound round a steel tuning pin driven tight into a laminated wooden plank. Tuning means turning that pin with a lever by a fraction of a degree, and then setting it so it stays, which is the part that takes years to learn.
A pin that turns too easily means the plank has dried and the piano will not hold a tuning. That is one of the things checked on every visit, and the reason a few old pianos end up on the restoration page instead.
On the same visit
Small Repairs
If there is time and the part is in the bag, it is fixed before the tuning starts.
- A key that sticks down or comes up slowly.
- A note that buzzes, rattles or keeps sounding after you let go.
- A broken string in the treble, replaced from the wire in the bag.
- A pedal that squeaks or does nothing.
- Loose or chipped keytops.
Anything bigger, a regulation or new hammers, is quoted on the visit and done in the workshop. Write first if you already know what is wrong, with a photograph of the piano.