I recently bought a toy piano for my daughter, but wasn’t quite happy with the sound of it and was wondering if there was a way to adjust the tuning. I came across this video on YouTube which explains how the tuning of each note can be lowered by adding some metal to it – Toy Piano Man suggests using solder instead of winding wire around the rods, so I decided to give that a try.

I’d never tried opening one up before but it’s fairly simple to remove the lid, take out the metal tone rod assembly, and add some solder to the tips of the rods. I also experimented a little with placing some foam across the rods to damp them slightly. The toy piano spectrum has a lot of inharmonic frequencies present in it, but adjusting the tuning definitely has a helpful effect on the overall sound.

Hainbach’s video on his collection of toy pianos is also worth checking out.