08/19/2026
Advice for everyone who loves their piano: Hire a qualified piano tuner. Don’t buy the Amazon “DIY kit.”
Make sure you know who is tuning your piano because an unqualified tuner can cause irreversible damage. These problems often require costly repairs—or in severe cases can ruin the instrument.
Here’s a friendly reminder to hire a professional piano tuner instead of buying a “DIY kit”:
A client told me that her son-in-law tried to tune her piano before she called me. She had a Winters Spinet (probably a 70’s piano). Her son-in-law bought a “tuning kit” from Amazon. It included a felt strip, 2 rubber mutes, and a Harpsichord tuning lever!!!!!
For those of you who don’t know, a harpsichord is a stringed instrument in which the tuning pins are held at much lower tension and are easy to adjust with a small tool.
Pianos are much higher tension and require a lot more leverage to adjust the tension of the strings.
Surprisingly, he somehow managed to tune B3 to G #4! More than a 5th sharp of what it was supposed to be. I was amazed that the string didn’t break on him. He probably stopped there because his hand got tired with his small tuning lever! I applaud Winters for making a piano that could handle that tension, and God for letting it not snap on the way back down!
