I Finally Got My Piano Tuned!

My piano is a hand-me-down from my Aunt. I've had it for maybe about 3 years and it was in need of a tuning! If the stickers inside the instrument are to be believed, it hasn't been looked at since 1986!

I finally had it tuned yesterday and I highly recommend my guy, Jim! (If you live around the Sacramento area, I'll give you his contact info.)  He did a great job. Jim's an old family friend so I absolutely trust him to be an honest, hard working man. I also know that he's an accomplished musician so I could trust his ear.

His story of becoming a certified tuner is fascinating. Here's the short version: Heavenly Father led him to this path, he studied a year-long piano tuning course in only 2 months, and then passed the test with only missing one question (the highest score the school has ever seen), and then was able to explain to the tester why the one question he missed was poorly worded. So, yeah, it's safe to say that he knows what he's doing!

Jim spent some time explaining to me what he was going to do, and then at the end he explained what specific needs my piano had. This was important because he thought he would have to remove the "action" (all the hammers and keys) to clean and fix sticky keys and he didn't want me to freak out if I saw him tearing my precious instrument all apart 😂.  He also gave me some helpful tips for properly caring for it.  And a really neat lesson on American A440 vs European A432!

Another cool thing that Jim does that really sets him apart is this little portable vacuum he uses. As a free bonus included with his tuning services, he vacuums around the hammers and keys. Now I won't be embarrassed when I open up the piano to show new students how the instrument works because there won't be a layer of dust on everything!  lol

The piano sounds so good now!  It turns out that he only needed to tune 20% of the strings but it's amazing what a difference that 20% made!  The keys that were the worst were D and E directly above middle C.  He had to stretch and retune them 3 times because they kept slipping back to an out-of-tune state.  This makes sense considering my piano hasn't been tuned regularly and not at all for a few decades. These keys also get a lot of use! But they sound awesome now!