PianoMeter – Piano Tuner 4+

First time DIY success!

My tuner for my Steinway M recently passed away and as I looked for someone else, I thought why not go down the rabbit hole and see what it would take to tune it myself. After a lot of research, I decided to give it a try, if nothing else I would learn more about my instrument. I purchased a high end tuning hammer and some mutes, and decided to go with PianoMeter for the app. It was recommended to me by another pianist/tuner, and I believe it was what my previous tuner used. For the basic paid version it did everything I needed and was far less than the other professional tuners. While it took me about 6 hours to do my first tuning, it was a lot of fun and ended up sounding great! There are definitely things one needs to learn with experience, such as setting the pin and tuning unisons, but this app and all of the great documentation and video walks you through the whole process. Anthony the developer was very responsive and helpful with a few questions I had. I can’t say enough good things about the app and support, I highly recommend it!!!!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for sharing this!

Good tuning app with regular updates

Nice looking UI, frequent updates & automatically calculated tuning curve on the fly: Awesome.
I bought the 1 year pro subscription to do a pitch raise on my in-laws very out of tune piano, and it worked very well.
I’ve also recently purchased a used Yamaha U1 which I’ve timed twice in 3 weeks, first a rough pass after it was moved to my house and it acclimated, then again to fine tune it.
I was first discouraged that it took like 5-6 hours to do the first rough pass, but the second pass a week later went way faster (like half the time) as I starting to get the hang of the order of the tuning pins and the much smaller adjustments for fine tuning.
What also helped speed up is to not focus so much on the number of cents too high/low, and setting a threshold in your mind, but rather getting the rotating “discs” to stop spinning.
Interesting is that after the first rough pass, the bass strings sounded very shallow and I was really bummed, then I pulled up PianoMeter again to check and the mid range was all about 2-3 cents too high (either from the accumulated change of tension across the piano or me just tuning it slightly sharp while focusing too much on the numbers). So after tuning it that second time, the bass strings resonated beautifully again.
I very much recommend this app.
I’ll probably tune my piano myself from now on, and more frequently than once or twice a year. I totally recommend this app.

This is the app to get, + some precautions

Tuning a piano is NOT like tuning a guitar, violin or any other instrument. This is a tool specially made for tuning uprights and grands and does a great job at being a tuning aid. Before you attempt to tune your piano PLEASE be familiar with the subject of tuning as there are many subtleties to it. When using the app, tune octaves starting from A4 with the tuning curve unlocked. Every piano is different and you must establish the tuning curve by ear rather than assuming the default works with you. Even as you are tuning - be sure to always check the extremes of the piano with your ear. You get out of this app what you put into it. Have fun!