How to tune each instrument without damaging it, and — just as important — which parts to leave alone. On strings, fine tuners are safe and pegs are not: a slipped or over-tightened peg is the single most common reason instruments come back to us. Tuning is free for our renters whenever you’re in the shop, and most teachers will tune at the start of a lesson.
Because it is a string instrument, and that is what they do. We tune every instrument before it leaves the shop, but strings stretch and settle, wood moves with temperature and humidity, and the instrument travels. By the time it…
The main tuning slide, the large U-shaped one nearest the mouthpiece end, sets the overall pitch: out to flatten, in to sharpen. Warm the horn up first, because a cold trumpet plays flat and you will chase your tail adjusting…
A clarinet is tuned by adjusting how far the barrel is pulled out from the upper joint. Out to flatten, in to sharpen. Small movements: an eighth of an inch is a lot. Two things matter more than the adjustment…
The strings are C, G, D, A, lowest to highest. For everyday touch-ups, use the fine tuners on the tailpiece with a tuner app, and leave the pegs alone. Beyond that, the most useful thing we can tell you is…
Use the fine tuners, the small screws at the tailpiece. They move the pitch a little at a time and are very hard to overdo. The strings are G, D, A, E from lowest to highest, and a clip-on tuner…