Pianotech

If you want stable, come to the west coast, AKA Piano Paradise. I've looked after pianos right next to the ocean which only needed tuning every five years or so once they got over where they had been before. One retiring musician from the MIdwest really didn't approve of my tuning fee. I told her that she wouldn't need to tune her piano four times a year anymore. She resisted, and finally had me tune it when she couldn't stand it anymore. Three years later, she was much more relaxed. She hadn't needed to call me again -- though I did tune it for her several more times, every few years.

These days, with climate change, all bets are off, but when I arrived in Corvallis, the summers were Mediterranean (mild but mostly dry) and the winters were very wet and rainy, but not very cold. The heat was on to moderate the winter moisture in the winter. Humidity seemed to vary between about 35% and 50% but was usually in the 40's. I was shocked when it got up to 60% for a few days in the spring: still some rains but warmer so the heat was off. If people phoned me then, when they told me the tuning had gone really bad in just a few days, I'd tell them to wait three weeks and then call back. The suddenly bad tunings tended to self-heal by then.

I theorize that some places in the high desert, dry all the time despite a wide range of temperature, also produced some amazingly stable and well-preserved pianos, if they had arrived when they were young and strong. In Stockton, one week I saw two big old uprights, unrelated, from Montana, neither tuned in over 30 years. Both were one quarter tone sharp, no doubt due to somewhat higher humidity. One in particular, opened up, looked amazing. There was a tiny thin patina of gray-brown dust, and underneath all the metal looked brand new. 1930's piano.

If you want stable, come to the west coast, AKA Piano Paradise. I've looked after pianos right next to the ocean which only needed tuning every five years or so once they got over where they had been before. One retiring musician from the MIdwest really didn't approve of my tuning fee. I told her that she wouldn't need to tune her piano four times a year anymore. She resisted, and finally had me tune it when she couldn't stand it anymore. Three years later, she was much more relaxed. She hadn't needed to call me again -- though I did tune it for her several more times, every few years.

These days, with climate change, all bets are off, but when I arrived in Corvallis, the summers were Mediterranean (mild but mostly dry) and the winters were very wet and rainy, but not very cold. The heat was on to moderate the winter moisture in the winter. Humidity seemed to vary between about 35% and 50% but was usually in the 40's. I was shocked when it got up to 60% for a few days in the spring: still some rains but warmer so the heat was off. If people phoned me then, when they told me the tuning had gone really bad in just a few days, I'd tell them to wait three weeks and then call back. The suddenly bad tunings tended to self-heal by then.

I theorize that some places in the high desert, dry all the time despite a wide range of temperature, also produced some amazingly stable and well-preserved pianos, if they had arrived when they were young and strong. In Stockton, one week I saw two big old uprights, unrelated, from Montana, neither tuned in over 30 years. Both were one quarter tone sharp, no doubt due to somewhat higher humidity. One in particular, opened up, looked amazing. There was a tiny thin patina of gray-brown dust, and underneath all the metal looked brand new. 1930's piano.

If you want stable, come to the west coast, AKA Piano Paradise. I've looked after pianos right next to the ocean which only needed tuning every five years or so once they got over where they had been before. One retiring musician from the MIdwest really didn't approve of my tuning fee. I told her that she wouldn't need to tune her piano four times a year anymore. She resisted, and finally had me tune it when she couldn't stand it anymore. Three years later, she was much more relaxed. She hadn't needed to call me again -- though I did tune it for her several more times, every few years.

These days, with climate change, all bets are off, but when I arrived in Corvallis, the summers were Mediterranean (mild but mostly dry) and the winters were very wet and rainy, but not very cold. The heat was on to moderate the winter moisture in the winter. Humidity seemed to vary between about 35% and 50% but was usually in the 40's. I was shocked when it got up to 60% for a few days in the spring: still some rains but warmer so the heat was off. If people phoned me then, when they told me the tuning had gone really bad in just a few days, I'd tell them to wait three weeks and then call back. The suddenly bad tunings tended to self-heal by then.

I theorize that some places in the high desert, dry all the time despite a wide range of temperature, also produced some amazingly stable and well-preserved pianos, if they had arrived when they were young and strong. In Stockton, one week I saw two big old uprights, unrelated, from Montana, neither tuned in over 30 years. Both were one quarter tone sharp, no doubt due to somewhat higher humidity. One in particular, opened up, looked amazing. There was a tiny thin patina of gray-brown dust, and underneath all the metal looked brand new. 1930's piano.