"We tell people, "Don't leave your ears at home,' " Sanderson said. It doesn't mean you don't need the doctor anymore, but it gives you a much better diagnostic tool."Įven with electronic tuning instruments, tuning remains an artistic and creative task. "It's such a beautiful way to do it, I've never seen any reason to change."īut Callahan disagreed about the value of a computerized tuning program: "It's like an X-ray. "I learned to tune aurally by a tuner who learned aurally," Sullivan said. Steinway & Sons, for instance, allows its concert technicians to tune only by ear.Īnita Sullivan, a tuner in Corvallis, Ore., said she had no need for an electronic device. The danger of a device like CyberTuner, many tuners say, is that it becomes a crutch. Then there are the purists, who shun any kind of electronic aid. Karla Pfennig, a tuner in Austin, Texas, who uses Accu-Tuner, said, "I'd have to take my (Apple) G3 PowerBook around, and I'm not going to do it." Speaking of Accu-Tuner, she said, "It's dedicated, and it has a battery that lasts for weeks, as opposed to hours." (Reyburn and Sanderson are in a patent dispute over a feature that automatically steps a tuner from one note to the next.) But those who prefer the Accu-Tuner say they would find it too cumbersome to carry a laptop to every tuning job.
#Professional piano tuner device software#
While the $1,200 Accu-Tuner is a self-contained device, Reyburn's CyberTuner software takes advantage of a laptop's power, which allows it to do more things. "If you try to do this on your own," said Taylor Mackinnon, vice president of the Piano Technicians Guild, "be sure to have a good piano tuner's phone number at hand."
#Professional piano tuner device professional#
Neither product is aimed at untrained hobbyists who might want to avoid hiring a professional tuner. Sanderson has sold nearly 6,000 of his Accu-Tuners, which means that many of the country's tuners _ a number that some put at 10,000 and others at 15,000 _ use some kind of electronic tuner. Accu-Tuner is the invention of Albert Sanderson, a physicist in Chelmsford, Mass., who has been creating electronic tuning devices since 1973.
Many tuners prefer Accu-Tuner, a more entrenched mainstay of the piano tuning world. "Instead of writing this obscure program to help a few thousand piano geeks, he'd be working at a computer company and probably making millions." "If Dean Reyburn lived in Silicon Valley, none of this would have happened," Callahan said. Reyburn has sold about 1,000 copies of the program at $800 each.Ĭallahan marvels at the program's versatility and power. But not only are CyberTuner, Accu-Tuner and other such products anathema to some tuners, they are the unlikely fuel that has rekindled a debate over how pianos should sound in the first place.ĬyberTuner is the work of Dean Reyburn, a professional piano tuner and amateur computer programmer in Cedar Springs, Mich., who wrote the program a few years ago to help fellow tuners. Another popular product is Accu-Tuner, a stand-alone device that is used by more tuners than CyberTuner. While there are many tuning aids, the CyberTuner software has inspired a loyal following among tuners such as Callahan. Settings for each piano are stored in the computer for future reference, eliminating the need to start from scratch every time Callahan returns to tune an instrument, he said. Tuning a piano with CyberTuner is usually no faster than tuning a piano by ear.
With CyberTuner, Callahan can create a customized, uniform tuning for each of the 800 or so pianos he tunes each year.
What CyberTuner adds is a highly accurate visual readout of the pitch of the strings as they are struck or played. Callahan still must use his ears to listen to the pitch and a tuning hammer to manipulate the tuning pins.
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