How To Easily and Quickly Tell How Many Strings are in Any Piano.

Ever wondered how many strings are in a piano? Here's an easy way to quickly tell. The piano starts in the bass with single strings; one string per note. Then goes to two strings per hammer, called a bichord, for about 10 or so notes, then the rest have three strings per note. The total number of strings in a piano depends on where in the piano the notes go from single to bichord, and where they go from bichord to trichord. Consider a standard piano with ten singles strings and a change from bichords to trichords at C3: A0 to F#1 = 10 Strings G1 to B2 = 17 x 2 = 34 Strings C3 to C8 = 61 x 3 = 183 Strings Total = 227 Strings Now memorize that for a piano with ten singles, and where the strings change from bichords to trichords at C3, the total number of strings for that specific piano is 227. Then to quickly figure out the total on another piano, count how many singles, where the change from bichord to trichord is, and make the following simple calculation. Example: Piano has 14 singles and changes from bichord to trichord at F3 14 singles means 4 less. Change at F3 means 5 less. Total strings = 227 - 9 = 218 Strings. Impress your friends!

About the author 

Mark Cerisano, RPT, B.Sc.(Mech.Eng.)

Instructor and Founder, howtotunepianos.com

You may also like

Setting F3-A3

Beginning technicians are often advised to initially set F3-A3 to 7 beats per second (bps). Mathematically F3-A3 = 6.9 bps in equal temperament so it’s a good guess.After using the skeleton or contiguous M3’s also known as Jack’s Stack, we can refine F3-A3 to be more what the piano needs, but 7 bps is a

Read More

---

How to Regulate a Piano!

I often read questions on piano technician forums from technicians asking how to regulate a specific piano. For example, recently someone posted this.“I’m regulating a piano and the book says to regulate blow distance at 1.5 inches”or“I can’t find any regulation specs for this specific piano in any books” The writing of these books implies

Read More

---

Analysis of a Unison – Before and After

When a string is played, it vibrates in different modes. It can vibrate in one section, two sections, three sections, etc. These modes are called partials or harmonics. The following graphic shows how the harmonics relate above the note A4.When two or more strings are tuned together, all of their partials must have the same frequency

Read More

---