Just got our Bösendorfer Imperial into the studio after having it stored in a place where it was used (without our permission) for concerts, recordings and weddings. And the last tuner working on it decided to raise the pitch to 444Hz. Well, partially, he left the upper 1.5 octaves at 443, thankfully.

The piano is 50 years old now, has heavily been used as an instrument in a recording studio and concert hall and the pin block is definitely not new anymore.

I really wonder what makes people think they could simply do with someone else's property whatever they want as long as they get away with it. Anyway, did a pitch lowering yesterday, corrected two or three unisons today and then recorded a Brahms Intermezzo to cool me down.

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This Imperial sounds so lush. Gorgeous. Especially you playing it.

Anyhow, this is first time I’ve heard of A444. My 280VC is A443, so it’s still quite far from A440.

I mostly get it that way since Bose says they do it like that. I figure sure whatever, and it sounds great at 443. I’m sure at 440 it sounds great too.

16 days later

Considering the age of the piano, could the pinblock crack if the tuming was raised that much?

I usually keep mine around 442-443. The beast seems quite stable in that range.

When I received my Schimmel upright the tuning was 145 or146 but then the piano was not totally new. With my Sauter upright the technician did not mention that the tuning was higher than 140. He is a different technician recommended by the previous one (retired) but trained in Sauter pianos. (I need to ask him)