<HTML>List, At Northern Illinois University we have S&S "L's" in all the piano major practice rooms.  They all date from the early 1970's.  In the past 10 years or so David Graham has been replacing the action and doing a Stanwood on many of them.  In the last 4 years or so I have been restring them with 4/0 pins.  The boards are actually better than many 5 year old S&S I have seen lately.  Nary a crack.  The bridges are also in good shape.  With 4/0 pins the pins are coming out with very good torque.  There have been only a few pianos that I wasn't real happy with the torque.  My expectation is that this set of strings will be good for 20 years with maybe only a few exceptions.  I would expect (if I am still around) to replace the pinblocks with the next restringing and with an age of 50+ years I would expect of replace a few soundboards.  We are probably on the 4th or 5th set of keybushings in the worst case and except for the recital hall "D" all of the key sets are still good to go. As far as the hammers go the S&S have held up the best and are the easiest to voice down, the Renner wear fine but boy do the get loud, and the Able got chewed up pretty fast.  I am not sure which Able model was installed. Andrew Remillard Northern Illinois University</HTML>