<HTML>In a message dated 11/8/01 11:17:41 PM Central Standard Time, gnewell@ameritech.net writes: Greg. You ask some good quesitons. Let's examine them. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">What about the fact that as the wire ages you get closer and closer to the elastic limit of the wire. I'd swear that I can sometimes tell when a string will break by the way it sounds. </BLOCKQUOTE> Do we know for sure that the string does continue to stretch? We do pitch raises on pianos that haven't been tuned for a long time. But I've also tuned older pianos that had not been tuned for 10 years, but who were tuned on a regular basis before that, and they were basically on pitch. We know seasonal changes cause pianos to go out of tune, but are we actually stretching string in the winter, and unstretching the string in the summer, or are we adjusting the tension as it is related to the soundboard?   Another reason to me is the fact that the piano becomes harder and harder to tune <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">with age because of string rendering problems. I suppose that these are related in at least a small way. </BLOCKQUOTE> The difficulty of rendering is a reason we might want to change the string, just as recapping the bridge, repairing the sound board, or replacing the pin block are reasons to replace strings. But do those reasons have anything to do with the string itself? I guess you could argue that you need to change the string to make it easier to render, and that by the time the bridge needs capping, and the pin block needs replacing, the strings are pretty much shot too.   Perhaps we could also ask ourselves why guitarists and other stringed instrument <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">players find the need to replace strings too? </BLOCKQUOTE> Greg. Do the string player replace the steel strings, or just the gut strings? I don't know the answer to that. Wim </HTML>