Very interesting question--

[Farrell]

IMHO, a piano will continue to go more and more flat with time - until the strings have no (or nearly no) tension on them at all. 

I've tuned a few piano where the customer knew for sure that the piano had never been tuned (they bought it new) - I think the oldest ones like that I've seen were 50-some years old - and they were two to three half-steps flat.

I did tune a piano a few years back that was located in the living room of a Civil War-era farmhouse. The State of Florida was developing the site into a working Civil War-era farm/park. They had documentation that the house had been vacant since the 1880s. I don't remember the manufacture of the piano (some off-brand), but it was built around 1870 (looked it up in Pierce). So presumably, it had not been tuned in 120+ years. It was five to six half-steps flat. I brought it up to a full step flat - one of very few pianos I have left flat.

Terry Farrell
  ----- Original Message ----- 

  I wonder what the limit is as to how far flat a piano will go if it is never tuned. Let's say a piano was built in 1900, tuned many times in the factory until the strings were stretched out and the tune stabilized.
  If it were never tuned after that, would it reach a point, let's say, in the 1960's, 70's, or 80's where it would not go flat any more? And how flat would it end up being -- 150 cents? 200 cents? I'm curious because I've seen many old uprights that were about 150 cents flat, and I wondered if they were ever tuned over their 100 year lifetime.

  Jesse Gitnik
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