With the thread regarding what to charge on Thanksgiving and the range in prices, I was wondering what the price is in your area for a piano tuning.

I don't own an acoustic piano but I believe the typical rate here is €80 to €90 ($120 to $130).

I pay $90 here.

That's for an upright. I'm not sure if tuners charge more for a grand.

Just paid $90 here in N.E. Ohio about a month or so ago with the promise that if I have it tuned again within the year he will only charge me $80.

Generally about $100 around here. You can pay more or less, but that's pretty average. You can get as low as $50-$75 on a "special", but not sure I'd want to use them.

$80-$100

80-90 euros here, too, usually including some general regulation if not too complex. Of course, hammer work and any heavy job on the action are charged more.

$140-165 in this high priced US metropolitan area.

Yup, $100 range

I charge $90. Includes any minor work that needs to be done (sticky keys, squeaky pedal, etc.)

I'm glad to hear that minor work is considered part of the tuning.

I pay $200 for my guy. Needless to say I could pay the going rate which is $100-150. However after trying probably at least fifteen different guys and one gal over the past 24 years, Alan Cate's tunings "hold" better than anyone else in town with maybe the exception of Richard Davenport who won't travel to Glendale from the Westside.

One thing I found out about 9' pianos. The soundboard flexes or floats more than on a 7'er. Sometimes after Alan tunes, two weeks later it sounds out of tune and then in a few days it's like it pops back in...strange. I'm told this is a characteristic of 9' pianos.

$90 for my grand.

Who do you use, gryphon? Just curious.

Are these rates door to door or plus a trip charge? I know nothing about tuning a piano but figure it must take at least a couple of hours to do right. Even poorly done must take almost as long. It doesn't sound like piano tuners make plumber money.

By the way, the US dollar amount in my initial post is a result of the very weak US dollar. If the dollar were stronger (against the Euro) the conversion rate would have yielded a lesser dollar amount.

$80 Can. for my baby.

I think that would depend on the condition of the piano being tuned. When I had an upright in the house the tuning would take about an hour. For the larger jazz shows I stage manage they tune the piano the day of the show and the tuner is usually done in under an hour. I would expect pianos that are wildly out of tune or in need of mechanical repair to take longer.

Timely thread. I just heard from my guy that he's raising his rate from $95 to $110. He said he's keeping it at $95 for me though -- I get him a lot of referrals.

My previous guy charged $80. Then I went for someone more well known and it popped to $150.

JMcS, my rate includes travel around the greater Lansing area (a radius of 20 miles or so). I've tuned pianos outside the area and for them I will charge mileage.

Most tunings take me around an hour. With travel I'm usually done in 90 minutes. Some tuners charge for small repairs by the hour. I don't. If something is going to take a long time or needs more than a small repair, I will consult the client about it and we'll figure out the best course of action for their budget.

For pianos that have not been tuned in a long time, they need a pitch-raise. Pitch raises take more time and thus I charge more. A standard pitch raise usually take about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. I basically rough tune the piano two to three times and then apply a fine tuning on the final run through. For that I charge $125.

I don't charge differently for different kinds of pianos. Grand, upright, baby grand, spinet, console... they are all the same price. I do give discounts for long-time customers.

Thanks. It doesn't take as long as I thought it would.

$100-$150.

My guy came last year and charged me $90. I kinda feel bad for my piano tuner as I think work is really slow and he calls me pretty frequently, like 2-3x per year about tuning or if I have any referrals for him. He does other stuff, but says that hardly anyone is getting their piano tuned in this economy. I try to have mine done 1x per year and I refer as much as I can.

Regards,
Eric

Aren't shorter harps harder to tune, since the harmonics are sharper?

We pay $85.

I've been using my guy for the past 27 years, and he still charges me the same price as when he first started: $60.00

This also includes minor repairs. He is an elder gentleman, who won several boogie-woogie piano competitions back in his day, so I receive a free "lesson" every time he comes out as well!

Any piano. In general, bigger pianos will drift more with changes in humidity, but it has a lot to do with the individual instrument. My 6' Yamaha C3 was the most sensitive one I ever encountered. The same factors that make a piano sound great, nice crown in the soundboard and nice tight grain, also make it very susceptible to this.

The soundboard and ribs are glued together in a belly press, upside down. The floor of the belly press is dish shaped. A portion of a sphere with about a sixty foot radius. When the piano is assembled, the board is glued to the rim. On average, string tension totals about 40,000 pounds. Each string makes a little zigzag across the bridge through the bridge pins, then a slight downward angle behind the bridge. The resultant vector force pushing down on the soundboard, against the crown, is about 2000 pounds. When the humidity goes up, the board expands. It can't expand out, because it's constrained by the rim. It's got nowhere to go but up, increasing the down bearing, thus tension, causing the piano to go sharp.

The effect is not uniform. The notes affected the most are in the middle of the piano, where the strings cross the bridge in the middle of the board, where the crown is the highest. Intervals across the break, between notes on the bass bridge and the low end of the treble bridge, go bad first and worst.

Tune your piano during a comfortable dry spell, and it'll sound great until you get a day or two of oppressive humidity. Piano goes out to lunch. Cold front passes, and a day or two later the piano sounds better.

Great! Maybe it's time to buy him a little present like a bottle or two of his favorite whatever.

I had a barter system in place with the tuning of my Yamaha grand in the US. I would make practice tapes for a trumpet player in the big band (and make him lunch) and he would tune my piano for free. It would be tuned four times a year at a minimum. I really tried to have it tuned closer to every month or every other month.

There's nothing like a freshly tuned piano.

I have a rental upright in my house. The last time we got it tuned the guy charged $85. We got the guy through the piano rental company, which is a local guy with a storefront on San Carlos Blvd. My wife sweet-talked talked him, and he liked her New York accent and attitude, so we probably got a good deal. She has a way of getting good deals, which is why I always let her do the talking.

I'm actually due for a tuning myself. We moved in her in April and got a different piano from the rental company the day we moved in. We were going to tune it a week or so after it moved in, but it actually sounded great, so I never called. But now it's drifting out of tune enough so as I notice. I suspect that my ears are far less discerning than most of you guys -- all my early learning was done on crappy, slightly-out-of-tune, upright pianos. Sounds normal to me.

--Dave