# How many piano tuners are there in New York City? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 4, 2002, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953 "2002-09-04T14:13:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/41 "2012-11-21T14:20:58Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > If you’re willing to drop a couple hundred bucks on tools, spend an entire weekend tuning, and probably end up with imperfect results, go ahead. > [@gotpasswords](#): > > And then, you may wind up with a piano that’s in technically perfect tune, but it will probably be soulless. I heard this once, at a wedding, except it was a harp. My brother’s wife got one of her friends to play harp and she used a digital tuner on it and it came out pretty much characterless. She was a good harpist, too, just I would have preferred a more Baroque-sounding instrument than the synthesizer-like perfection that ensued. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2012, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/42 "2012-11-21T23:21:01Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > So why do we need dedicated piano tuners anyway? Is tuning a piano really that much more complicated than tightening some strings with a wrench (screwdriver?) and sitting there with a tuner? Tedious, to be sure, but it doesn’t sound herculean. I suppose the strings breaking is a concern, as getting piano strings probably requires some special orders here and there, but it seems odd that one can make a whole profession out of it. I’ve used TuneLabs, which is a great program. It even measures the inharmonicity of your piano, to adjust how it tunes. But it doesn’t include the skill required to do a good job. Ignoring the “soul” question, even if it had the perfect tuning curve for your piano, using the tuning hammer to tune the notes and to get all three strings for each note tuned together takes a fair bit of skill that takes time to develop. What’s worse, us amateur tuners work those tuning pins a lot more than a pro would (since we miss a lot and retry), making our pinblocks wear out way faster. For a decent new grand piano, it’s cheaper to use a pro than to DIY, taking wear and tear and the resultant devaulation into account. There’s also a lot more to maintaining a piano than tuning it, including voicing and action work, among other things. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Never mind! ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/43 "2012-11-21T23:24:32Z")
1. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/44 "2012-11-22T00:11:33Z")
And yet, for almost all other instruments, anyone who can play it capably can also tune it capably. Why is there so much less skill needed to tune, say, a guitar than a piano? Or are all of the guitar players of the world unknowingly playing soulless instruments? ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/45 "2012-11-22T02:28:08Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] Why is there so much less skill needed to tune, say, a guitar than a piano? [/QUOTE] A basic guitar has six strings, but a piano has around 230. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/46 "2012-11-22T18:13:50Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > A basic guitar has six strings, but a piano has around 230. In addition, guitarists who want well-regulated instruments periodically take their guitars to a technician for action and intonation adjustments. As with piano tuning, you can learn to do it yourself, but a good pro generally does a noticeably better job. Having done my own guitar action & intonation, as well as some piano tuning and piano action restoration, the guitar is a _lot_ simpler and easier. A good piano tuner does more than just tune the instrument. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/47 "2012-11-23T02:42:01Z")
> [@JCorre](#): > > … > I’m a PM and therefore I’m a bit more soft-hearted than you engineering types so I give them a bit of encouragement. A soft-hearted Prime Minister? What’s a PM? ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/48 "2012-11-23T02:54:30Z")
Probably a Program Manager. -D/a ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/49 "2012-11-23T02:55:23Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > Probably a Program Manager. > -D/a No, it is a Project Manager in that context. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/50 "2012-11-23T03:01:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > … a question on it “Estimate the total area that would need to be covered by solar panels to meet all of the US’s electricity needs”. Well, my friend started by saying “The solar constant at Earth is about a kilowatt per square meter, but I’m not sure what the energy consumption of the US is.”. I, on the other hand, didn’t know the solar constant off the top of my head, but for the energy consumption of the US, I just assumed “Oh, call it the equivalent of about 5 100-watt light bulbs per person”. Meanwhile, although I didn’t know the solar constant off the top of my head, I _did_ happen know all of the following facts, which were enough to derive it: > The Schwarzschild radius of the Sun > The gravitational constant and the speed of light > The efficiency of hydrogen fusion > The fraction of a star’s hydrogen that will be fused in its main sequence lifespan > The main sequence lifespan of the Sun This is fascinating. 1. Either of you would flunk an interview depending on which kind of interviewer/position you were seeking. 2. It’s interesting to ask for what professional interview, to which job, would _all_ these (and other) wildly disparate approaches be considered worthy of? 3. **Chronos** , could you step through your answers/chain of thought? 4. Speaking of disparate, I’d like to see–perhaps as a contest–how many weird and wildly different “knowledge points”/individual links on a chain of thought can be strung together to get to an answer. Sort of Rube-Goldberg fuzzy logic. > [@JCorre](#): > > … “How would you figure out how many time pieces there are in the bay area?”… > “How would you figure out how many planes are in flight over california at a given time?”… So, how would you? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/51 "2012-11-23T03:31:28Z")
For time pieces in the Bay Area, I’d ask for clarification for what constitutes a “timepiece”, then estimate how many each person has, then multiply by an estimate of the number of people in the Bay Area. That’s a pretty short one, really. The planes in flight, I’d have to give more thought. > [@](#): > > 1. Chronos, could you step through your answers/chain of thought? Sure, though I’m feeling to lazy right now to actually do the calculations. The Sun’s Schwarzschild radius is 3 km, and is equal to 2_G_m/c^2, so I can get the mass of the Sun (which is close to all hydrogen). Over its lifetime, about 10% of that hydrogen will be fused: So 10% of my previous number is the amount of fuel available. I know that in hydrogen fusion, about 0.7% of the mass is released, and I know E = mc^2, so now I know the amount of energy the Sun releases over its lifespan. That lifespan is 10 billion years, so divide that energy by 10 billion years, and I have the Sun’s total power. Distribute that power over a sphere 300 million kilometers in radius, and I have the intensity at the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/52 "2012-11-23T15:10:57Z")
What’s the 300 million kilometers? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/53 "2012-11-23T15:54:57Z")
The distance from the Sun to the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Charles\_Peterman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Charles\_Peterman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charles_Peterman)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953/54 "2012-11-23T21:58:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > For time pieces in the Bay Area, I’d ask for clarification for what constitutes a “timepiece”, then estimate how many each person has, then multiply by an estimate of the number of people in the Bay Area. That’s a pretty short one, really. The planes in flight, I’d have to give more thought. See, I was somewhat vindicated by asking what _is_ a “piano tuner” – just take what you know, flash some normal-distribution numbers out of your ass, and make some basic calculations. That’s why I said this was a bad question – just take people in Manhattan, say, and something you got out of Time magazine about piano-owning “households,” and just do the math out loud. Better to ask a real question, if I were interviewing (which I probably will never be) with some meaningful citeria and judge how calm the pigeon stayed on mark when making the trivial calculations in his or her head. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-piano-tuners-are-there-in-new-york-city/126953.md?page=2)