<html> <body> Thanks, Dale. You said it much better than I could have! :-) Avery At 10:19 AM 7/21/05, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">             Ric     Frankly the idea that a good tuner can't get good results when using a temp strip is Hogwash. It sound like your saying something similar.   I've been using complete strip muting for 32 years & I beleive the stability of my work speaks for itself. I know many others who do as well & with the finest results you can imagine   I will say that the material used for muting can have an enormous impact on the stability. Rule no. 1....Do not use supply house temp strips.  I use the thick green action cloth for years . It's stripped to about 1/2 to 5/8 wide. I use the one that gets thinnest  from use in the top treble ,the next most worn one in the capo section & the thickest newest one in the middle & bass. Using this cloth spreads the strings to a bare minimum with effeicient damping.   The efficiency of the whole tuning system is also less tedious for me than always moving hands & mutes ... but that's me.   If using one mute works well for you then this is great. It's the results that count. but enough of the myth that strip muting can't give excellent results.    Dale <dl> <dl> <dd>Hi, Susan and Michael et al, <dd>The whole business of strip muting for either the temperament octave or even into the further reaches of the piano has always been controversial here in UK.  Probably like Michael I was trained very traditionally, to discard the strip mute quite early on and rely on one's ear for laying the temperament with just two wedges.  It has always been looked down upon in the profession here if a tuner still has to use a temperament strip, almost suggesting that his/her ear is not reliable enough to do without it.  The analogy being a baby's walking frame I suppose!   Because  of this early influence I can actually feel 'ashamed' if I resort to using  a strip or rubber gang mute on a difficult piano. Do i need psychoanalysis?  However, I could actually argue pretty stongly in favour of using them with very small grands and uprights where inharmonicity is so pronounced that setting an acceptable temperament can take more than one pass, and using this aid would be quicker.  When this topic comes under discussion over here it is generally argued that the temperament is not exactly the same when you return to complete the unisons and that the whole excercise can be more time consuming. <dd>It would be interesting to know what proportion of tuners is 'mute free' <dd>Ric </dl> </dl>    Erwins Pianos Restorations 4721 Parker Rd. Modesto, Ca 95357 209-577-8397 Rebuilt Steinway , Mason &Hamlin Sales <a href="http://www.Erwinspiano.com" eudora="autourl"> www.Erwinspiano.com</a></blockquote></body> </html>