<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.3020" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 bgColor=#ffffff leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7> <DIV>IMHO, a piano will continue to go more and more flat with time - until the strings have no (or nearly no) tension on them at all. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've tuned a few piano where the customer knew for sure that the piano had never been tuned (they bought it new) - I think the oldest ones like that I've seen were 50-some years old - and they were two to three half-steps flat.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I did tune a piano a few years back that was located in the living room of a Civil War-era farmhouse. The State of Florida was developing the site into a working Civil War-era farm/park. They had documentation that the house had been vacant since the 1880s. I don't remember the manufacture of the piano (some off-brand), but it was built around 1870 (looked it up in Pierce). So presumably, it had not been tuned in 120+ years. It was five to six half-steps flat. I brought it up to a full step flat - one of very few pianos I have left flat.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Terry Farrell</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV> <DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"> </DIV><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>I wonder what the limit is as to how far flat a piano will go if it is never tuned. Let's say a piano was built in 1900, tuned many times in the factory until the strings were stretched out and the tune stabilized.</DIV> <DIV>If it were never tuned after that, would it reach a point, let's say, in the 1960's, 70's, or 80's where it would not go flat any more? And how flat would it end up being -- 150 cents? 200 cents? I'm curious because I've seen many old uprights that were about 150 cents flat, and I wondered if they were <EM>ever </EM>tuned over their 100 year lifetime.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Jesse Gitnik</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></BODY></HTML>