It only takes me 1 to 1.5 minutes to strip mute a piano, sometimes 30 sec longer on verticals since you have to get the mute behind the dampers. And sometimes longer because of being tired or not focused. Time-wise, you save a lot not having to move mutes around. Plus, if you double strip, you can tune by whole tones moving up, then down a section (tuning unisons, that is). JF <div>On 2/27/07, RicB <<a href="mailto:ricb@pianostemmer.no">ricb@pianostemmer.no</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi Allen Actually,  uprights is what I started using just rubber mutes on. Getting the strip on was always just a pain in the patootey and it just didnt seem to be worth the time to dig the thing out of my bag, put it in, do the temperament and whip it off again.  Once in a while a rubber mute slips and I have to dig it out of the damper levers... but you get used to avoiding that. I remember years ago going into a music store in the north Seattle area called Prossers (I think thats how its spelled) I watched this guy strip mute the entire piano... took him ten minutes all in all.  I just didnt ( and still dont) get the point. Seems counter productive to me.  But, different strokes. In the end if you get good results its not so important I guess. Cheers RicB     Ric,     I'm curious, do you use the same method on uprights as well? I don't     use strips on grands, but prefer to on uprights, because I don't like     dealing with the gravity issues (mutes falling out or drooping down     onto the dampers, etc.).     Allen Wright </blockquote> </div>