<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <TITLE>Message</TITLE> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=671544220-04032006>I do new piano prep and floor tunings at a local piano store one day a week. This store has one sort of odd-job employee who does things like basic unpacking and screwing things together and dusting. He also has the occasional task of getting inside pianos to do things like remove the hammer lock board that new grand's are shipped with, (what's the real name for that thing?), and to do some basic clean up. Yesterday, I found him cleaning strings on a very decent used Steinway. He had removed the action and was using some very fine steel wool to polish up the tuning pins, agraffe's, plain wire strings and the wound bass strings. This activity on the pins, agraffe's and the plain wire strings didn't bother me so much but I had some serious doubts as to whether this was a good idea for the wound bass strings. So, I'm writing today to ask the learned opinions of the wise techs here, as I was unsure enough about this practice to actually say anything. </SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=671544220-04032006></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=671544220-04032006>-- Geoff Sykes</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=671544220-04032006>-- Assoc. Los Angeles</SPAN></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>