<div style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: rgb(0, 0, 0); FONT-SIZE: 12px"><div>Jim,<br />    First off , the good news is the cat must be dead by now .<br />  How old is the piano  ? What about crown, downbearing ,rib and bridge integrity ?  Let's assume that the board and bridge were cleaned and all glue joints were inspected  and  that the strings were contaminated by the aforementioned event. Replacing the strings way back then seems like that was the correct call ,<br />but your report from the pianist is that the piano didn't sound well since . Too bad.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> 20 years later you are called in and by some miracle the bichords are corrected by just moving the string braid .   Good work. <br />You mentioned not wanting to rush in to working on the unichords. Why not drop tension on the worst offender and remove it from the hitch pin.  Make a loop in the string and work it across it's length, reinstall with a twist or two  in the direction of the wrap and pull it up  to pitch  ?<br />  If the tubbyness is improved one can assume it's a string problem.<br /><br /> A  loose bridge pin condition is often a problem with  pianos right out of the crate so it's a false assumption that the thing is too new for the pins to be loose. In any case a loose bridge pin will not  usually cause a tubby string sound. <br /><br />Lastly , 20 years is a long time and who knows what quality strings or workmanship went into the installation.<br /> If you want to be cautious you could have a few strings across the section duplicated and see if that corrects the problem.If the experiment is a  success  replace them all from a good string maker . Maybe restringing  the whole piano makes sense with  rescaling .<br /> My suggestion is to evaluate the whole piano  -- board , block ,action etc.  then proceed<br /><br />Good luck,<br /> Tom Driscoll RPT<br />    <br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div style="border-top:1px solid #bcbcbc;margin:5px 0px;"></div><span style="font-size:12;font-family:arial;color:#000000;">On 10/13/11, <span>Jim Henson<a1propianos@gmail.com></span> wrote:</span><div style="font-size:12;font-family:arial;color:#000000;">A cust. has a Steinway M that his cat urinated in the bass area of soundboard approx. 20 yrs. ago. He is a good musician. He said piano sounded great before fluffy decided to hose it down. He had a tech. replace strings of entire bass section however hasn't sounded well since. I relocated the stringing/braiding cloth of the non-speaking section of bi-chords & they sound fine now. I have not let the tension down on the unichords yet not wanting to rush into this. A thought would be he may have wrapped the strings too many x's @ the hitchpins. The board has plenty of resonance & no visable damage to inside/outside that I can see by inspection. The urine was on the board 2 wks. I have lightly tapped strings @ bridgepins. I feel piano is to new for loose bridgepins. Strings are tubby & dead. Any input would be appreciated.</div></div>