<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Yes, I've heard this and while the thought is taken to ridiculous ends here there is a certain sense to the idea. Certainly a piano that is tuned often in its starting years gains a certain stability that is lacking otherwise. At least thats been my experience, and I've had plenty enough opportunity to compare similiar pianos. There is a lot that settles in over time with 35 to 50 thousand pounds pulling at it, not to mention the composite nature of this stress. That being said... its a looooong stretch indeed to declare a piano worthless because it hasnt recieved proper attention in its early life.  One of the absolute worst rip-off attempts I've seen through the years went along these lines... 86 year old widow, 3 year old Sauter upright.... piano tech told her she'd destroyed her piano because she'd let the pitch drop. (turned out to be 6 cents flat). He offered her a few hundred dollars to take it off her hands. Poor old gal was beside herself, but had the sense to call another tech and check. Pretty low stuff. Anyways... I believe a good start in a pianos life definatly helps,  but its certainly a long ways from alpha/omega. Cheers RicB     Tvak@aol.com wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>List I recently tuned a 3 year old Baldwin console.  The client told me that thier piano didn't stay in tune for very long and that the previous tuner had told her that it was probably because she didn't have it tuned regularly when she first got it.  (This piano had not been tuned for over a year after they first got it.) Their tuner said that it hadn't been "trained" properly, and it would never hold a tune very well. Now I had never heard of this and I told her so.  The piano was certainly out of tune when I first got there, but it had been about 9 months since it was last tuned, so there was nothing out of the ordinary as far as I could see.  The pins were Baldwin-tight. I did my best to make my tuning as stable as possible, and I'll have to wait till they call for another tuning before I'll find out if there is an actual problem or not. But, has anyone ever heard of such a thing?  If a piano is not tuned regularly in its early life, it will never hold a tune?  I can't fathom that this could be true...sounds like a line of BS. But then, what do I know? (Answer: Less and less as time goes on!) Tom Sivak</blockquote> -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. UiB, Bergen, Norway <A HREF="mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no">mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no</A> <A HREF="http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html">http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html</A> <A HREF="http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html">http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html</A>  </html>