<html> In my case, here at the university, restringing of the treble ( the vee bar section) of many of the grand pianos with high usage is necessary every 5 years or so.  That is due to the string breakage alone.  Because of the heavy blows, I believe the wire's elasticity limit is relatively quickly exceeded at the vee bar, and as it is retuned, being brought back up to pitch constantly,  that area of the string being over stretched, it will finally break at that point.  I believe that as long as that isn't happening anywhere else in the plain string sections, the other strings do not have to be replaced.  Of course, wound strings have their own problems as they age.  So as you say, there then becomes other reasons the piano gets entirely restrung.  <blockquote type=cite cite>. . . I agree that servicing all bearing points is easier with the strings removed. But the big question still remains, is there a reason  to restring the whole piano? Unless someone else can come up with another valid reason, I am still not convinced that restringing is something that needs to be done, other than for the obvious reasons, like replacing a pin block, even after 100 years. Wim </blockquote> Vinny <<a href="mailto:vince@byu.edu" eudora="autourl">mailto:vince@byu.edu</a>> </html>