I just tuned a 100 year old (this year) Bechstein upright with an open-face block. It had half agraffes all the way up the scale from the bottom. Pulled it up 150 to 200 cents with regular overpull and nothing broke. It was sounding pretty decent on the third touch-up pass. Hammers were a little flat, robbing higher partials but what a clean rich sound. Goes to show that buying a good piano now means you will have a good piano for a couple generations. Customer didn't know what she had. Her parents had bought it for her (long ago) for three hundred pesos when there were three pesos to the dollar. I could assure her it was worth much more. A week before I was called to try to retrieve a no-name upright a few decades younger. About 1/4 of the strings snapped. Action was floppy and the bottom was broken, not supporting the pedals. Quality really is cheaper if you consider the instrument's useful lifetime. Andrew Anderson
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