Hi Duaine, One of the first ten pianos I ever tuned back in 2003 was a Lansdowne that was sitting well below pitch. It belonged to a friend of mine lived nearby. The pitch raise had been attempted by another tuner and abandoned after a half dozen or so strings had broken as he worked downward from the top of the overstrung section. You could see how he had used up his supply of universal replacement strings as he went. It had been left by him one semitone low. Having more guts than brains, I decided to take it on. I did some reading about lubricating the bearing points, and certainly did get an education as I went. I broke one double wound string, and got my first experience in string splicing. I broke probably a couple of single wound strings, and got to play with my spanking new set of universal bass strings. I probably broke a half dozen or so treble strings and got to open up my new Schaff Music Wire Assortment Kit. Ultimately, the piano came into tune and held well, but it took quite some time to stabilize. I don't think I did any overpull in those first tunings of that instrument. I was pretty confident that the piano was designed to be tuned at standard pitch. If there's any question, checking the string scaling to make sure is certainly in order. The bass strings had some rust on them, and after passing over the pins at the upper bearing point dragged along a hardwood strip that was at least an inch wide. If you removed a string, you could see a string groove in the strip. This explained to me the high rate of string breakage in the bass--lots of friction there. If I were starting from scratch on that piano now, I would probably loosen down the bass strings, remove them from their hitch pins, and polish that whole non-wound section with scotchbrite, or even with flitz. I remember polishing one up, and seeing a dramatic difference in how the string rendered. I wish you all the best on this project. Floyd Gadd Manitoba Chapter
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