Nice work, Ron N and David L. I recently had a case where a piano had been "rebuilt." The problem was that the old phenolic resin panel, under the understring felt was reused, with new felt glued to it. Re-rebuilding it made no sense. It had new strings and tuning pins. The pins were tight enough in the block. Bridges and soundboard were fine. It was just a problem of the strings becoming imbedded in the felt and grooves in the old underlying phenolic panel, producing so much friction that the string would not render. It was impossible to tune with any stability. Normally, I would not reuse the old strings once they were removed, but in this case the strings were not all that old and were "pre-stretched." I removed the strings in the tenor section from the tuning pins, replaced the understring felt and phenolic panel with a brass half-round and softer, narrower understring felt on both sides or the brass counterbearing, and replaced the original strings on their tuning pins. It was a lot of work, but not as much as restringing the tenor section, and dealing with the instability of new strings amid the older more stable strings. I was surprised that the old strings exhibited as much instability as they did, but certainly not as much as new strings would have. I must confess that I have reused the phenolic resin panel with new felt glued on top. After this experience ... never again! It's a bad system to begin with. You need a counterbearing to relieve the potentially severe friction. Frank Emerson
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