<html> At 03:51 PM 6/29/2005 -0500, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Maybe (Egad!) I'm wrong. </blockquote> Now, no need to take drastic measures. <grin> <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>But I still want to know what would permanently change in a piano to take pitch down—in this case 700 cents! I can't believe the wire stretches that much or the case warps that much or the plate shifts (at all) .... it's a heck of a mystery. Where does the tension go? Maybe this piano went to a spa, got a really good massage, and took Vallium ...</blockquote> Maybe I treated it with vodka, and it got all mellow ... Maybe the board flattened, flatter than a pancake ... (is negative bearing flatter than a pancake?) Then there are those bridge pins, you know, the ones that have bent over backwards to be accommodating. ("We don't _need_ no stinkin' sidebearing!") That and a flat board go along with Ontario summers and winters, many, many, summers and winters, one after another, back and forth, trading off one on one, in the way they do. And remember those sagging tuning pins in the deep bass? You know, the ones with the little quarter-moons of space above them, where they've been pulled down enough to lean on the plate? While the tenor wasn't quite that bad, I imagine (this tuning was in 1979, I imagine, not remember) that they had pulled off true at least a little bit. This was that sort of piano. Painted light green, (or was it some other light color?), as well. Why, that's enough to make a piano sag, isn't it? Would YOU keep way up to snuff if somebody painted you light green? Wire does stretch. Joints sort of creep and sometimes outright fail. If you want to see a piano warp, tune a spinet with all four feet on the ground, and then put three of the feet on caster cups, and leave the fourth (left front will do) hanging in midair. Test the octaves across the break .... <grin> been there, done that, only in reverse. Susan </html>