<HTML>F</BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">arrell wrote: > "Hmmm.. I wonder about this statement.  I have heard pianos that > definantly improved with time. Not your heavily used instruments > that get just plane beat to smitherins... but Intruments that get > used a good deal, nicely as it were... and significantly (me > thinks anyways..) they all seemed to have a pretty optimal > environment." In the short term, yes, many variables. But take 100 > hi-quality violins at  age 100 years and 100 hi-quality pianos at > age 100 years. Which group sounds/plays most like they did when > new - or better. I think the violins win. No? If thats true then we would have to ask ourselves why it is... and what immediatly comes to my mind is whether a piano can have anywhere near optimal climatic conditions combined with reasonably good maintanance over such a long time. Where as a violin may very easily have that kind of a life for so long a period. Its all probably moot anyways.  Who's going to provide those kind of conditions for a piano over so many years to find out... ? Talk about your time consuming experiment. Still.. its interesting to think about. - -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no </BLOCKQUOTE> Terry, Richard and others who have responded to this thread, I think it has been mentioned by one person that Stradivarius (and others, notably Amati, Guarneri, etc.) instruments are not usually found today in their original form......longer necks, increased angle of the neck, longer fingerboards, higher bridges, etc., to conform to the changes in taste of the violin sound in the time since the late 16th c.  A few museums have original instruments, but they haven't been played regularly, either.  So are they still Strads (or others)?  Everyone seems to agree that they are, at least the marketplace tends to value them regardless of the later alterations nearly universally made. One other thing is worth pointing out, though perhaps it is obvious enough that it didn't NEED pointing out.............and that is that the soundboard on a piano is a stressed member of the entire structure.  By contrast, the top and back of the violin has its shape by virtue of it having been carved out of a much larger block of wood.  The stress placed on it by the string tension and bridge/soundpost/bass bar transducer arrangement is much less than that of a piano soundboard (obviously), and having its shape already formed lends itself to....well....self-preservation (barring fire or accident sufficient to prevent repair). Just HAD to throw this into the mix.....sorry! Stan Ryberg Barrington IL mailto:jstan40@aol.com</HTML>