<html> <body> So, Jeff... I guess the answer is "NO".  At 09:46 AM 3/25/2004 -0700, Jeff Stickney wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite> Short of restringing, is there anything I can do to help this situation? </blockquote> The various responses were exhaustively illuminating, and worthy of implementing, BUT... As you pointed out, you are in a contract situation, with little money provided for anything other than tuning.  So here are some questions, for you and the other contributors: How many hours would it take to do most of what has been suggested, including all the follow-up stabilizing?  Otto alluded to this. How would you propose to bill for the work?  I know Marc Cramer suggested one approach to appealing for the authorization, but this would seem to preclude doing the more extensive job, on a close to thirty year old piano.  This doesn't seem a wise move to me. How does your success or failure in this effort affect your longer range goals?  In other words, does success do anything to convince them of the need for increased resources? Does your super-human effort make you a hero, or simply set an unreasonable baseline for future expectations? The discussion reminded me of the thread a few years ago regarding tuning speed. Just because some of us appeared to be able to perform seemingly remarkable feats of speed and stamina, didn't, IMO, justify establishing such as benchmarks.  Some technical questions: Jeff, you never replied regarding the downbearing measurements.  While I expect that the range of suggested cures would induce an improvement in performance, even with a bearing problem, I wonder if the consensus would be to carry out such measures, or to wait until the larger problem could be addressed. Fred and Marc..can you tell me what is accomplished by sanding (or planing) out the string grooves?  As much as we are cautioned about "over tapping" the strings to the bridge, it seems it would be a lot easier to do serious damage in the groove-removal effort.  Likewise, unless the bridge edge has been mangled, what would be the purpose of renotching? David Skolnik </body> </html>