<div>Alan,</div> <div> </div> <div>I'd say yes to both questions, but I have seen hard evidence that strings do indeed continue to stretch as time goes by.   </div> <div> </div> <div>One of the pianos I've tuned for years has had its plate sprayed with gold paint sometime ago.  Including the agraffes.  And of course, even the strings have gold paint on them, too.  Except where they were inside the agraffe, of course.</div> <div> </div> <div>The part of the string that used to be inside the agraffe is now on the tuning pin side of the agraffe.  You can clearly see an agraffe sized space where there is no paint.  These strings have stretched a good half inch since the plate was painted, which was done long before I took over servicing the piano.</div> <div> </div> <div>Tom Sivak</div> <div>Chicago</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div><BR><B><I>"Alan R. Barnard" <tune4u@earthlink.net></I></B> wrote:</div> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> <div> </div> <div>It's like the other question I posed and have never felt I had a satisfactory answer: Since a piano cycles up and down, typically, with humidity swings, why doesn't it always stay centered around the last tuned pitch. In other words, what is the cause of long term major pitch drops and what has changed in that piano over the 20 years since it was last at pitch. Do the pins turn? Does the wire just keep stretching? Why don't we know? </div> <div> </div> <div>Alan Barnard<BR>Salem, MO<BR>Joshua 24:15<BR><BR><BR></div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>