<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">List, Don't get me wrong.  I tune some Chinese pianos--Pearl Rivers in pa= rticular--that are among the most stable pianos I work on.  I tuned one= yesterday, for example, that had barely budged in a year.   On the other hand, there are Niemeyer pianos.  I have found nothing= about them that I like.  I was supposed to tune one yesterday, but I s= pent my entire appointment time trying to get several keys unstuck.  It= wasn't tight key bushings, balance rail hole, center pins, or negative lost= motion.   What it ended up being--I hope and pray that it's "ended up"--was missha= pen jacks digging into overly soft hammer-butt material of some sort and jus= t wedging themselves up there.  I sanded off the sharp edge of the jack= that seemed to be catching, and it worked.  I also think that the acti= on geometry on these pianos is really bad. I do not wish these pianos on any of you.  Anyone out there have ex= perience with these objects?  I swear that this thing made really appre= ciate the Pearl River I worked on later in the day. Like many people, he bought the piano because, from the outside, it look= ed just about as good as any of the other shiny black pianos in the store, a= nd he couldn't be convinced that it wasn't.  I think I managed to talk = him into exercising his "trade-up" option. We pay for our ignorance in the end, don't we?  And we pay for othe= r people's as well. Dave Stahl </HTML>