Tuning and disharmony of a used upright piano

I won't be very scientific or polite, but if you can recognize by ear that you don't like it, that the sound isn't harmonic, you should worry... give us some more details, but know the basic rule of pianos, or at least those in use: if it is good, or at least well-maintained, cared for and prepared, and has been tuned properly at least once in the last three years since it was played, then it will be difficult to tell by ear that it is in bad shape!

This is because not everyone has perfect pitch and the piano tends to go out of tune uniformly; an exception must be made given that it's a million degrees this summer and because you have just 'moved' the piano into the house.

One last thing, which is very important, much more than you can imagine/believe/hope: the location, the wall where you place the piano

if the vertical is very low ....
some tuning problems on the deep bass are always present,
but if you feel that it's not right...... it's not right!
try to post an audio file...
... without hearing it yet, I would say it needs to be intonated and tuned

Once upon a time, there was the former tuner of the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, Mr. Meazza, who was called by Claudio (Abbado) to tune a brand new Steinway 155 (Model S) that his friend Pollini had chosen for him, directly in Hamburg amidst all that goodness.

He was never satisfied with the tuning; the chords in the distance—that is, played together outside the center of the keyboard—did not sound right... and so he would call him back, claiming that the piano was poorly tuned.

At a certain point, poor Meazza, who was no novice and had tuned several thousand pianos, said to him: "Listen, I'll leave the tuning hammer here; you tune it yourself."

The problem of disharmony, inharmonicity, or anharmonicity exists. The late Eng. Radice also attempted to address it scientifically with two pages of illegible calculations published in a trade magazine, and he got so angry when, at a European convention, Klaus Fenner, klavierbaumeister, told him that they were all interesting things but were of no use to a piano manufacturer! In the end, they all ended up becoming lawyers, including the then-editor of the magazine and even the president of AIARP at the time.

This is to say that the problem of disharmony exists, it is known to everyone, and there is no solution other than purchasing the largest, most expensive, and most beautiful piano available on the market—a solution that mitigates its effects to the ear, much to the detriment of one's peace of mind. Otherwise, one must settle and perhaps choose a good tall upright with correct hitchpin sizing, which favors clarity over power; the latter has now become a priority for manufacturers and has led to the increased use of various components—damping, percussion, etc.—to chase the increase in string gauges, which is also a consequence of shortening a piano.

The best steel, the best copper, the maximum possible string length, and the minimum possible gauge are all requirements that contribute to mitigating the problem, but they are not characteristics of more commercial pianos.

Even approaching tuning in scientific terms, claiming to fit the partials in such a way that resonances do not disturb, is in my opinion a waste of time, since it is the result that counts: namely, that everything is pleasant to the ear, stable, and long-lasting.

Now, you don't know what piano was purchased, you don't know who tuned it, the client is coming from a digital piano (the worst kind of client for a tuner), and you already say that everything needs to be redone? Perhaps the piano needs to be changed, not the tuner.

A small note: having perfect pitch does not help in evaluating a tuning; if anything, what is needed is a good relative ear.

At university, I wrote a paper for an exam on algorithms titled: algorithms for piano tuning. I concluded my paper by saying that there cannot exist algorithms capable of making piano tuning pleasant to all ears. Sound perception is something that goes beyond mathematical and physical science. It is a subjective matter dictated by psychoacoustics. In the paper, while talking about algorithms, I also had to talk about inharmonicity, explaining it mathematically, with "illegible" equations as Giovanni says... If memory serves me correctly, they were second-order differential equations. In any case, inharmonicity depends on a myriad of factors and is due to the non-ideality of the strings. Any string, even the longest one, differs from the ideal string (its gauge tends toward 0). Certainly, the strings of concert grand pianos, which are very long, come closer to the ideal string and limit these phenomena. If the string is short, on the contrary, they amplify them. Various factors contribute to inharmonicity: the gauge of the string, the construction material, the tension level, etc. All these factors cause the nodal points that are created on the string when it produces harmonics to not be points but spherical surfaces, and for these spherical surfaces not to perfectly occupy the central point of the various halves of the string sections but to be slightly shifted back. Therefore, this effect produces sounds that are not pure harmonics but indeed "Partials," frequencies that, although close to the ideal harmonic, are not perfectly centered on that frequency. This effect is all the more evident the shorter the piano is, because the percentage deviations are larger the smaller the piano is.

I would add one thing to what has been said...

How does the room sound? What we perceive is also determined by all the acoustics of the room, and several times it has happened to me to hear a pf as "strange" in one room and then hear it sounding decent in another environment. The environment affects the timbre as well as other sound characteristics, so it could have an impact making it even perceived as disharmonious. ...or am I wrong?

But is the piano new or used? And what pf is it?

Well, the piano is in a living room of about 30 sqm; it's used, quite tall at 134 cm, and certainly also old, but I don't know exactly how old. To be honest, the tuner gave me a rough idea of its age, but I don't remember well if he meant 'the piano is 30 years old' or 'it is from the 1930s'.

It says Carl Hardt Stuttgart and the serial number is only 4 digits; in short, I fear it might be much older than I thought.

If it were truly from the 1930s, it must have been restored because the cabinet is practically perfect and the keyboard is plastic.

Unfortunately, when I bought it, I barely even knew how a piano was made, but for the price it had and for how it looked visually, it was fine with me. Well, now I've been able to verify that the hammers are very worn down, they need to be thrown away, and this certainly worsens the sound.

Furthermore, I realized that the tuning was actually done well; it is precisely the disharmony that is high. At this point, I wonder if changing the strings (if they are decades old) or doing a complete overhaul could improve the sound. Then there's me, who actually believed that an upright piano could sound like a grand, oh well.

Grooved hammers cannot guarantee a good result. Furthermore, one must see if the hitch pins and tuning pins have been installed correctly

Since Gia and I have been misunderstood, I want to emphasize; as a simple amateur pianist, just to respond to a ''colleague'' who is more inexperienced (at least regarding acoustics), I suggest some factors to analyze. I am overstepping a bit by saying that he is probably right in the sense that perhaps something is wrong; knowing the used piano market vaguely and knowing the average buyer vaguely, I overstepped, okay? My apologies.

but since as a pianist, for 10 years and having changed several pianos, both new and used, I never felt the need to call the tuner, I allowed myself to give judgments.

good music