Collection: Piano Tuning

Contact us via telephone or email to schedule a piano tuning, regulation, voicing or repair.

T: 0800 032 9919

E: info@shacklefordpianos.com

Prices start at £100

Here at Shackleford Pianos, we offer a world-class piano tuning and repair service designed to maintain and protect your valuable investment.

Our team of highly trained and passionate piano tuner technicians is dedicated to delivering the best possible tuning work, ensuring your piano performs at its optimum level.

As conventionally trained piano service specialists, our technicians use tuning forks to gauge and readjust changes in the instrument’s pitch. This fine-tuning sharpens their hearing and demonstrates the principle of resonance in practice.

Adjusting for the correct pitch, or resonant frequency, is essential because a piano’s internals are affected by changes in dampness and temperature. In Britain’s cold climate, seasonal variations cause temperature fluctuations that impact your piano’s sound. Exposure to radiators and central heating with intermittent running times can also affect tuning over time.

Consequently, our technicians constantly compensate for acoustic variations caused by thermal expansion and contraction of the instrument, ensuring your piano always sounds its best.

The piano has one of the sweetest and most evocative voices of any instrument. But over time, even the most meticulously crafted piano will go out of tune, and the magic can be lost. To keep your instrument sounding its best, it’s important to find a reliable piano tuning service and have your piano tuned every six to twelve months.

Tuning a piano is a lengthy and demanding process, as every string must be tuned individually. Since notes in the middle and upper ranges are sounded by multiple strings, some pianos have up to 236 strings in total! By comparison, violin players only have four strings to tune, and guitarists six.

Based in Cheshire and serving North England, Manchester, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Chester, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, and beyond, we occasionally have the privilege of servicing instruments belonging to well-known figures in the music industry. You can be confident we will be just as meticulous when tuning your piano.

Providing a professional piano tuning service to dedicated and discerning musicians is not simply about adjusting strings until they sound right. We set up each piano to continue sounding its best until its next service. Our expert technicians use tuning hammers, tuning forks, mutes, and electronic tuners to ensure precision in every tuning.

All modern pianos should be tuned to A440Hz — the International Concert Pitch. This is the standard pitch level that most modern musical instruments are designed and constructed around to deliver their best tone and volume. Pitch can be likened to a language, and all instruments “speak” the same language when played at the same pitch level. For example, an orchestra or choir playing at different pitch levels would not sound harmonious.

It is extremely important to keep your piano regularly tuned and serviced for several reasons:

• Keep your piano playing at its highest possible standard

• Present your piano as an important educational tool

• Prevent future mechanical issues from arising

• Help retain or even increase the value of your instrument

• Most importantly, make your piano playing experience as enjoyable as possible

To ensure your piano is presented at its optimum level, it’s essential to understand the different types of piano maintenance procedures involved.

Piano Tuning

The first and most commonly known piano maintenance procedure is piano tuning. Accurate piano tuning ensures your instrument plays at the correct pitch level and remains in tune with itself. Modern pianos are designed and manufactured to resonate at a pitch level of A440Hz — meaning the A above middle C vibrates 440 times per second — which is the internationally recognised concert pitch.

Maintaining concert pitch is extremely important, as it means your piano “speaks” the same language as all other instruments. This is especially vital in music education for children, as early learning is largely aural. Scientific studies have shown that aural skills are key in musical development. Both adults and children can enhance their aural learning through various tools such as tuning apps and auditory training, like the Aural Trainer App

Why do pianos go out of tune?

Several factors cause pianos to go out of tune, which is why regular piano maintenance and tuning are essential to keep your instrument sounding its best.

• The tension the piano must maintain:

  A piano’s strings are under immense pressure—approximately 18 tons of tension are exerted by the stretched steel strings inside each piano. In a concert grand piano, this pressure can be as high as 30 tons. On average, each piano string carries about 160 pounds of tension, and there are around 230 strings inside a typical piano.

   

   

  Essentially, these tightly stretched strings are constantly pulling the piano apart! Naturally, anything under continuous tension will weaken or stretch over time. This is the main reason why pianos must be regularly tuned back to concert pitch, even if the piano is not in use.

  
  

• Climatic changes:

  Frequent fluctuations in temperature and humidity can significantly affect your piano. Pianos are made of hygroscopic materials—substances like wood and felt that absorb and release moisture from the surrounding environment. This causes these materials to swell and shrink repeatedly.

  This constant expansion and contraction creates internal stress and potential damage, especially in composite objects where different materials expand and contract at different rates. For example, the cabinet, wrest plank, bridges, soundboard, and action parts of a piano are made from wood, while the frame is cast iron, and the strings are high-tensile steel and copper.

  Because these materials expand and contract at different rates, the internal tension changes constantly. This causes your piano to drift out of tune over time, even if it isn’t being played.

  
  

• Impact stress due to usage:

  When a piano hammer strikes a string, it causes the string to flex and vibrate, producing the piano’s sound. The vibration of the string is essential—without it, there is no sound.

  The hammer travels less than 50mm before hitting the string, reaching speeds of around 21.6 km/h (6 meters per second). Although the hammer only contacts the string for a few milliseconds, it generates a force of approximately 300 Newtons. This intense shock causes the string to flex wildly.

  This constant flexing distorts the shape of the string, causing it to stretch and eventually go out of tune. The harder the piano key is struck, the faster the hammer travels, producing a louder volume but also increasing the flex in the string. This means that playing loudly and frequently causes the piano to go out of tune more quickly.

  In simple terms: the more you play your piano—and the harder you play—the faster it will need tuning.