At least once a year, but twice a year is advisable. For obvious reasons a well tuned piano is much more fun to play compared to a piano which is severe out of tune. In addition, regular tuning is better for your piano as well: a piano that gets tuned twice a year will hold a longer lasting stable tuning because the difference in string tension before and after tuning is smaller.

A pitch raise is a preliminary tuning performed prior to a regular tuning. It is also known as a pitch correction.
A pitch raise has to be performed when a piano has dropped in pitch significantly (437.5 Hz or lower), while it is desirable that is tuned to 440 Hz or higher. A pitch raise changes the overall tension on a piano’s structure as a whole: you’ll be adding potentially thousands of pounds more pressure onto the plate and the delicate wood parts of the piano (like the bridges and soundboard).
Without a pitch raise you can’t expect the piano to hold its tuning. A pitch raise should be considered being a rough tuning while pulling up pitch, after which a fine tuning can take place.
To avoid a pitch raise, you have to make sure you keep the piano tuned up to pitch. The only way to manage this is by having it regularly tuned. In this way you will enhance the tone and prolong the life of your piano.

You can measure your piano’s pitch by downloading the free Pano Tuner app for Android or IOS.
Open the app and play middle A on the piano. That’s A4 and it should measure at about 440Hz, the so-called concert pitch. 442Hz is also possible.
Pianos that have not been tuned for many years drop in pitch. Depending on how much the pitch has dropped, you can do two things: keep the pitch low, or gradually raise the piano to 440Hz in two to three tuning sessions. If you choose to keep a lower concert pitch, you’ll not be able to play together with other instruments: it will sound bad because the pitch of the instruments don’t match. But if you play solo, choosing a lower pitch is of course fine and a single tuning will be sufficient and do the job.

I do, but I charge a fee for that since tuning a piano with an overdamper action is way more time consuming. Overdamper actions (also called ‘birdcage pianos‘ because you see lots of vertical rods when you open the front cover) have their dampers mounted above the hammers instead of below them. You can see an example of a birdcage piano below. The damper is placed high on the string and at that point the deflection of a vibrating string is much smaller than in the middle part of the string. The damper is therefore not very effective and that is why you always hear a reverberation. Overdamper actions have not been made since about 1910 and for good reason: they are very difficult to tune, hard to keep at pitch and, as mentioned, you always hear a reverberation. The tuning block (in which the tuning pins rotate) is also made of solid wood; at that time it wasn’t technically possible to make plywood hardwood. If a crack occurs in an overdamper tuning block, it will affect all tuning pins. There is also a great risk of breaking strings and besides that, tuning an overdamper action is way more time consuming compared to a piano with a modern underdamper action. Because of all the rods it’s also difficult to see what you are doing. Repairs are difficult to establish and if something breaks, it is very difficult to get spare parts. Overdamper pianos often look beautiful and fit well in classic interiors. But the beauty on the outside does not compensate for the technical aspects on the inside.

No, not necessarily. I have tuned beautiful pianos that people bought through Marketplace. But also pianos that people enjoyed for only two days: the day it entered the house, and the day the piano left it.
Also ‘free to collect pianos’ doesn’t always mean they are bad pianos . Sometimes the owner of the piano simply does not want to pay for transport costs and therefore offers the piano free of charge.
The real question is whether it’s worth picking up. In general, this depends on the technical condition of the piano. You may find it usefull to read this blog which deals about important parts of the piano to look at when considering buying it. It will help to determine in which condition the piano is into. Still not sure? Give me a call, I’ll be happy to help.

A humidity between 45-65% is optimal. You can measure the humidity with a hygrometer.
If the humidity is too low, you can buy a hydrocele. This protects the piano from drying out. I can also purchase and install it for you during a tuning session. Please let me know beforehand since I don’t have them in stock.

If the piano is moved into an environment with a varying temperature and humidity, I recommend tuning the piano within 2-3 weeks after the moving date. This allows the strings to settle.
If there is very little temperature and humidity fluctuation between the piano’s’ old and new place, and the transport took little time or was carried out in a climate-controlled van, it only takes several hours for the piano to acclimate after which it can be tuned without problem.

The copper winding increases the mass of the string, without noticeably changing its stiffness. This allows the string to vibrate at a lower pitch without having to dramatically increase its length. In the extreme bass the strings may even have a double winding of copper.
Without this copper winding you would need a very long high-tensile plain steel wire to get a bass level pitch. And because of this the upper side of your piano would be as high as the lamps on your ceiling.

But of course. I can replace a broken plain steel wire immediately. It takes me approximately 20-30 minutes and I charge 35 euros repair costs for it.
But if a bass string has broken, depending on where it broke I can extend it with a new piece of wire. If this aint possible, I’ll have to get this bass string custom made by the great company Quality Strings and come back later to install it. This will set you back at about 60 euro’s (depending on the lenght of the string and the actual cupper price).

A piano is upright, a grand piano is horizontal. A piano has a rotation mechanism: the hammer strikes the string from back to front. A grand piano has a gravity mechanism: the hammer hits the string from below. Gravity creates the possibility to play faster. Compared to the upright piano you can play with more dynamics on a grand piano: you can add way more gradations between pianissimo and forte..
A grand piano also has much longer strings than a piano. As a result, a grand piano has on average a more pleasant and rich sound compared to an upright piano.

A piano has an average of 88 keys and about 230 strings. The middle and high notes have three strings per key, some of the bass notes have two strings, and the lowest bass notes have a single string.
The three strings for the middle and high notes have two functions: they amplify the volume and they enrich the quality of the sound. The strings of a note are vibrated by the hammer head. After the hammer hits the strings, the strings then also affect each other, also known as oscillation. The reverberations of the mutual strings add a lot of quality to the sound: it makes the sound much richer.
In addition, bass strings are much longer and thicker than the other strings. A bass string moves more air and creates more sound and volume than the treble. By adding more strings to the higher tones, the sound becomes more balanced.

The right pedal of a piano is called the “sustain” pedal, more commonly known as the reverb pedal. Pressing this pedal releases all dampers from the strings. If you now press a key, it will keep sounding, even when you release the key. Only when you release the pedal again, the dampers will come down and dampen the strings again.
The left pedal is called the “una corda” pedal. This means ‘one string’ in Italian. On grand pianos, the keyboard (and thus the hammers attached to it) shifts to the right when you press the una corda pedal. Now no longer three but two strings are played, making the sound sounding a bit softer. On upright pianos, the distance between the hammers and the strings is shortened when pressing the una corda pedal. The effect is the same: a softer tone.
The middle pedal is called the sostenuto pedal. It’s similar to the sustain pedal, but with one difference: this pedal sustains only the keys you’ve pressed while you’re also pressing the pedal. For example, you can play a chord with your left hand, leaving two hands free to play the piano. The chord will continue to sound until you release the pedal or until the sound has died out.
The sustain pedal is the mostly used pedal by pianists, followed by the una corda pedal. The sostenuto pedal is the least used of the three.

The piano was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori and he named it ‘gravicembalo col piano e forte’, which in short means: ‘harpsichord that plays softly and loudly’. After this, the instrument was called pianoforte and fortepiano for a while. In Italy the piano is still called pianoforte, but in the rest of the world the name has been shortened to the usual ‘piano’.