The Different Types of Pianos & Why They All Want to be tuned Differently
It’s a lovely and trite reality that good things come in small packages. Well… not with pianos. With pianos, size matters — and the bigger, the better.
One of the coolest things about pianos is their range. If you exclude the pipe organ (and your cousin’s digital keyboard he’s been using to make dubstep since 2012), the piano has the largest range of any instrument — certainly any stringed one. That means one instrument has to produce both thunder-low bass and crystalline highs, and that creates a fun design problem.
The only way to make a short string play a low pitch is to make it fatter. That’s why you’ll notice your lower strings are wound with copper wire — it adds mass and slows vibration, solving the low-note problem.
Of course, every solution creates a new problem. Winding strings with copper also introduces something called inharmonicity — a fancy word for “slightly imperfect harmonic relationships.” It’s why no two pianos sound exactly alike, and why tuning a piano isn’t as simple as matching every string to a precise frequency. A good tuner listens to what your piano is doing and tunes according to its own internal logic. Every piano has its quirks… which is exactly what makes them so beautiful.
The Upright Family
There are a few different types of pianos, and size is the main differentiator — especially for uprights:
- Spinet (36”–40”) – The smallest and scrappiest. Easy to move, fits anywhere, and somehow always reminds you of an iPod Nano — not the best, but boy did it have style.
- Console (40”–44”) – The most common home piano. Small enough to fit in a living room, big enough to sound respectable at Thanksgiving.
- Studio (45”–48”) – The “I take this seriously now” piano. Great resonance, slightly heavier, usually requires bribing a friend or uncle with pizza to move it.
- Full Upright (50”–52”) – The top tier of upright pianos. Huge tone, rich low end, and worth every bead of sweat it takes to get it through a doorway.
The Grand Lineup
Grands follow the same logic — just stretched horizontally:
- Petite Grand – Under 5 feet long. Cute, capable, and perfect for people who own exactly one tuxedo.
- Baby Grand – Around 5’5”. Popular, classy, and sounds fantastic in an echoey foyer.
- Medium Grand – Just under 6 feet. The Goldilocks option.
- Parlor Grand – Weighs around 650 pounds and taller than me on my dating profile.
- Semi-Concert Grand – About 7 feet long and genuinely majestic.
- Concert Grand – Nine feet of unapologetic glory. If this piano could stand upright, it could dunk a basketball and then complain about the rim height.
Each of these instruments — from the Craigslist Spinet you rescued from an estate sale to a $200k Bösendorfer 280VC — has its own personality, its own inharmonicity, and its own story to tell.
And every single one of them, no matter the size or price, needs to be tuned.
Kansas City’s humidity and temperature swings don’t care if your piano is a family heirloom or a thrift-store find — the wood expands, the strings shift, and little by little, that perfect harmony drifts away.
If you want your piano (and your sanity) to stay in tune, book a professional tuning with Piano Tuning KC. I’ll bring the tools, the ears, and maybe even the pizza for Uncle Rick.