<html> <body> Rex, Firm test blows will usually render enough tension through the bridge pins to the rear duplex to bring it up to tension and into the designed tune.  Mind you the rear duplex is not usually perfectly tuned and that on purpose to avoid zingers.  On new pianos that usually is sufficient.  Some pianos coming from China have been exposed to rather caustic air and may have some corrosion at the contact points to overcome.  I don't know if Pearl River is one of these where adequate precautions have been taken to prevent this.  I am aware that Geneva International (Nordiska and Weinbach) goes to great lengths to prevent corrosion of piano strings because of quality control problems that cropped up. Essentially the technique involves pulling the speaking length significantly over pitch and then tightening hitch-pin loops, straightening the wire path from the hitch-pin to the bridge pin, massaging the speaking length wire to pass tension back through the pins towards the hitch pins, gentle seating on the duplex bar and then gentle (!) tightening of the curve from the rear bridge pin to the hitch pin.  Follow that by gently tightening the front curve off of the bridge pin, tuning the speaking length down to pitch and levelIing the strings.  Where there is a front duplex gently tightening the curve on the non-speaking side of the capo and on the duplex bars will improve the sound there too.  I've noted that most affordable new pianos need some of this basic string-voicing done including string levelling up front and hammer shaping before they start to sound decent (especially lower tension scales).  Depending on how well a neglected piano responds to a pitch correction, I usually do some string voicing with a large pitch correction to get the piano sounding good again.  Again this can be a function of corrosion on the contact points that is difficult to overcome by firm test blows. Part of keeping pianos cheap is passing off the fine work to the dealer technician.  If Steinway does it, why shouldn't all the other less accomplished piano makers do it too?  Of-course that means a lot of things can slip past quality control but ultimately the dealer and the dealer technician are the final quality control agents and they vote with their dollars; behind them is the customer facing the Yankee dictum, "Buyer Beware." YMMV, Andrew Anderson, a Technician Dealer At 03:36 PM 8/18/2007, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> Andrew   You made the following statement in a reply to this thread. “If the rear duplex is not up to pitch, there is a tuning method to work on that specifically.”   Could you explain the tuning method.   Thanks   Rex Roseman Piano Tuning</blockquote></body> </html>