01
Concert pitch tuning
Aural and electronic tuning to A440, unisons finished by ear. Around 90 minutes for a piano tuned within the past two years, with a written humidity note on completion.
Mobile piano care · Inner Melbourne · Apartments & teaching studios
Your piano
is fine. The air
is the problem.
We tune, regulate and humidity-stabilise pianos in Melbourne apartments, townhouses and home teaching studios. One tuner, one van, no showroom — we come to the instrument, measure the room, and leave the piano at A440 with a written humidity reading for every visit.
Booking now
Weekday and Saturday morning appointments across the inner north, CBD, Docklands and inner east. Lift access and building induction handled for you.
The brief
Melbourne flats run bone dry in July and sticky in February. A soundboard notices long before your ear does.
Service radius: 12 km of Fitzroy, plus the bay-side line on request.
Tuning is half the job. Stability is the other half.
A piano rarely drifts because you played it. It drifts because the air in the room changed overnight.
An upright or grand is a timber instrument under roughly twenty tonnes of accumulated string tension. The spruce soundboard swells when the air is humid and shrinks when it is dry, and as it moves the bearing on the strings moves with it. In a detached weatherboard house that cycle is slow. In a sealed apartment with reverse-cycle heating, double glazing and a north-facing wall of glass, it can swing from 25% to 70% relative humidity in a fortnight.
That is why so many apartment pianos feel bright and thin by August, then dull and sluggish after a humid summer week. Tuning corrects the pitch on the day. Humidity control is what makes the tuning hold until the next visit — and what keeps the pinblock, bridges and action timbers out of trouble for the next thirty years.
Every visit starts with a hygrometer reading at instrument height, not at the front door. We log it, compare it with your previous readings, and only then decide whether the piano needs a straight tuning, a staged pitch raise, or a conversation about a humidity system before we touch a single string.
What we do
Six recurring jobs, priced plainly
02
Staged pitch raise
For instruments left five or more years. Tension is brought up over one or two visits so the piano settles instead of snapping back within a month.
03
In-piano humidity systems
Supply and installation of under-soundboard humidity control for uprights and grands. Discreet, quiet, and invisible once the lid is down.
04
Humidity monitoring
Calibrated room sensors, annual system servicing, pad and tube replacement, and a plain-English report you can forward to an owners corporation if needed.
05
Teaching studio plans
Two to four scheduled visits a year for music teachers, with holiday-period slots, priority call-outs before exams, and touch regulation between tunings.
06
Apartment move checks
Pre-purchase inspections, lift and doorway assessment, and post-delivery settling tunings once the instrument has acclimatised to its new floor level.
Tuned to 440. Held at 42 per cent. Written down every single visit.
Regular work for
- Fitzroy Conservatorium of Music
- Carlton Suzuki Studio
- Brunswick Music Teachers' Guild
- Docklands Owners Corporation Collective
- North Melbourne Piano Removals
- Abbotsford Rehearsal Rooms
- Collingwood Church Hall Trust
Next available
Two tuning slots most weeks, plus Saturday mornings.
Tell us the make, the suburb, the floor and the last time it was tuned. We will confirm a time and a fixed price before we load the van.