A closer look at Don Gilmore's self-tuning piano system

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Each string of the piano has its own sustainer module

Installing the self-tuning system in the piano

The low bass sustainer modules

The self-tuning piano system's main circuit board

The pitch is adjusted using an electrical current delivered to each string via ordinary battery-compartment springs riveted to printed circuit boards positioned at the bottom of the tuning pins

The current from the springs causes the strings to warm and expand, which decreases the string tension and lowers the pitch, lowering the current cools the strings and raises the pitch

To tune a string to the correct pitch, the note is entered into a continuous sustain by this device and then compared with the frequency of a correctly-tuned string

Kansas City mechanical engineer Don A Gilmore has developed a self-tuning piano system, which uses an electric current to bring the instrument to tune in under a minute

A strip of sustain modules ahead of installation

The entire tuning process is said to take less than a minute and at the end of the playing session, the power is turned off and the piano returned to its previous state

Article Summary

A few years ago Gibson began introducing some clever new technology to a select few guitars which automatically tuned the instrument and kept it there (seen most recently in the gorgeous Firebird X). I think that it's fair to say that robot tuning has not quite been a phenomenal success, perhaps due to the fact that tuning six strings only takes a few seconds and doesn't require any specialist training. That's certainly not true of the piano, which has more than 200 strings divided between 88 keys and its tuning is, for the most part, gratefully handed over to the experienced ear of a professional technician. In the 1990s, Kansas City mechanical engineer and classically-trained pianist Don A Gilmore created a mechanical self-tuning device for the piano. From there he went on to develop a thermal system that can bring the whole instrument to tune within a minute.

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