Tuning Schoenhut Toy Pianos

[JeanDavid]

I have a Schoenhut 379M toy piano that needed a bit of tuning. I know
they are not expected to be perfect, but the worst note was the
highest A# on the keyboard that played the same as the A. The G just
below that was also unacceptably flat, though not as badly.

I took the top of the piano and removed the assembly holding all the
tone rods (the keys and hammers remained in the piano). I labeled the
rods with pencil. I first tried filing the A# to shorten it, and it
worked a little, but not far enough. It was just too slow working. In
the process, I noticed that a few of the rods were blued, indicating
that someone else (the factory in China or the warehouse in Florida?)
had already done some tuning.

Finally I borrowed a Dremel tool from a friend of mine (motorized
gizmo like a dentist's drill in a way) and put a little grinding wheel
in the chuck. That worked very well for making flat notes sharper. Be
careful, though, because you do not want to go past your goal. I
stopped very slightly flat. I was gentler that whoever blued the ends
of those other notes. I did not blue anything and generated only a few
sparks in the process.

In theory, the way you flatten sharp notes is to fasten a small mass
(a bit of wire or a spring) at the free end of the tone rod. The exact
mass will determine the pitch. A previous post in this discussion
group implies that this can be unsatisfactory, so I am glad the notes
that are too sharp are close enough that I do not wish to fiddle
around with that.