<html> Just one comment on your 'technique'. Do NOT lower the tension by that much (45 degree turn) ! Lower the tension just until you hear the friction 'pop' which will only be a few beats, if that. I use a slow pull technique and do not hit the key hard and I do not have stability problems. It's a technique of ever decreasing overpull/lowering operations with the final tweak on the up-pull to leave the string segment between the counter bearing bar and tuning pin with a higher tension than the speaking length. Regards, Jon page At 07:15 PM 9/12/2002 -0500, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite cite>I don't have a lot of S&S experience (in the Ozarks? Gimme a break!) but I do tune a few.   Tuned an "L" infantile horizontal piano today and got thinking while wrestling with it. Pinblock quite tight (somewhat jumpy pins), string movement resistance quite high, and the collarless pins VERY sensitive to pressure in any direction--up pitch, down pitch, flagpoling, whatever.   I find many notes very hard to pull in for sweet unisons. I was personally taught by Randy Potter how to tune stable strings & pins but found that moving the pin in teeny notches is very hard--too high, too low, too high ...   If I got it just a hair over pitch and tried to settle everything with back pressure on the hammer, it dropped way too much. Finally, with time running out and getting a little desperate, I started dropping pitch (about a 45 degree turn of the hammer) and tuning "from the bottom" with a smooth steady pull while wanging the string pretty hard. Most of the time I could stop right on pitch --even on strings I had spent WAY too long trying to tune the "normal" way.   But I worry about how stable they are as I could not "set" the pin in the usual way.   Is this pretty typical Steinway?   What about stability in these circumstances?   What hammer techniques do y'all use on the beasts?   NOTE: While tuning, I was rehearsing a pretty negative inner dialog about Steinway and all of their "genuine Steinway parts;" thinking how expensive they are and how much they look like every other piano, etc. BUT after I tuned it, I played it. Even for a small piano, what a beautiful, sweet sound. Oh, the subtleties ... </blockquote> <div>Regards,</div> <div>Jon Page,   piano technician</div> <div>Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass.</div> <div><a href="mailto:jonpage@attbi.com" EUDORA=AUTOURL>mailto:jonpage@attbi.com</a></div> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ </html>