<html> Hi all- Newton, I apologize if I seemed to be minimizing  the effort required  for such an outing.  I haven't seen you for a while, and the fecundity of your correspondence belies your condition, or, in other words, I forgot about it.  As I hoped to make clear   I think that, without a doubt, the party with the pockets has  to be aware of the full cost of such an undertaking.  It should not, through ignorance or niggardliness, fall to the technician to perform a miracle  or an act of selfless heroism, however, I believe, as Charles said,  the dilemma is not likely to be resolved by our intractability.  It is fascinating  that what we are talking about is the "visiting" ensemble.  If someone from one's own region came in and demanded an altered pitch,  just because they happened to like it,  I can't imagine any  administrator complying.  Thus there seems to be an element of  host / guest hospitality at work.   And again, we wouldn't think to ban an ensemble from simply performing at  an alternate pitch, unless we all had perfect pitch and had grown up in 440ville.   The problem could be solved by banning piano concertos performed by visiting orchestras. <div align="center"> ********   FLASH  ******** </div> While looking in the dictionary  (Webster's New Universal Unabridged, Deluxe Second Edition) to see if the plural of concerto was 's' or 'es'  my eye fell upon the following definition for "CONCERT PITCH" : "in music, a pitch , slightly higher than the usual pitch, to which concert instruments are tuned in order to compensate acoustically for the relatively high room temperature of crowded concert halls" Oh my God...now what do we do?  How much higher are they going to tune? ...and we know that the piano will sound flat unless we're a little on top of them.  Yet another thought.   Mitch Staples wrote:  > I would push for a policy of A-440 only  except  we have a Taiwanese >percussion student with a marimba tuned at A-442. Do we understand that because one student arrives with a mutant marimba i tow, everyone is supposed to retool for 442?  Mitch, if you just file a little in the middle of each bar of the marimba, maybe... I would be disappointed to see this topic fade away or irrevocably  digress before some of the specific questions raised were addressed (although I am looking forward to checking out those "Bucketboss" cases, Richard.).    1) What is the tension difference at the various pitch levels.?   How  slowly or  rapidly does the plate respond to increase / decrease in tension?  How do the various target pitches impact on scale design, both wire gauge and structural members? 2) Derive accurate data on official and unofficial pitch levels around the world.  Either this information is already available somewhere, or, with current communication technology,  can be gathered.  The only impediment might be a reluctance to admit to divergence from the standard, as demonstrated by the last line of Rolf's excellent post, which I just now read. 3) Address issue of pitch in relation to singing.   Is there a credible vocal argument to be made for pitch lower than A440?   4) Date the above definition of  'Concert Pitch' first appeared. If anyone can provide answers to these questions, or suggest a knowledgeable source,  or be willing to research one of them,  please let me know.  I think we all stand to gain. David Skolnik Columbia University New York</html>