Tuning

Tuning is the art form of bringing a pan(s) to concert pitch by hammering each note up and down using special hammers. The ideal place to tune is out doors in a quiet area.

Traditionally, the pans were tuned by ear alone, but now tuners are also using strobe tuners to aid this process.

The basic areas of tuning are:

  • Coarse Tuning - the notes are roughly tuned so that they sound independent of each other.  This gives the opportunity to find out if problems may occur when fine tuning.    

  • Fine tuning the notes are tuned to pitch.

  • Blending final tuning after painting or chroming has taken place.

 

Most established bands only require their pans to be blended and this is usually done once a year. A tuner will usually go to their Panyards to blend the instruments. If this is not possible the pans can be sent to the tuner's Panyard.