<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Friends, Maybe I can help explain, because I do this on occasion.  In this area you can find pianos that will tolerate being raised from 200 cents flat to 100 cents flat without a problem, but if you go farther strings start breaking all over the place.  I think my worst case scenario was twelve torn strings, when it ewas important to the family to have the piano tuned to pitch. So this leaves me with a dilemma on these old in-my-opinion nearly worthless pianos owned by young families with very limited resources.  Do I simply take a "that's too bad, buddy" attitude and say it's got to be the whole way up to pitch to please me?  I'm not going to say that is necessarily wrong, but it's not the way I look at things. Sometimes it's like cutting off a dog's tail an inch at a time.  But sometimes it's like having a major operation intended to heal, but instead the patient dies, whereas a minor operation may have prolonged a life.  (I'm sure there's a better simile out there somewhere, but hey, I'm just getting going this morning!) Regards, Clyde Tom Servinsky wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>> I don't understand this "let's raise the piano up 50 cents this time and tune it, then next time we tune we will raise it another 50 cents, etc., etc." Exactly. It's like cutting the dog's tail  1" at a time instead of cutting it off in one sitting. Get the piano up to pitch as quickly as possible and be done with the instability segment of pitch raising  over and done. Tom Servinsky,RPT</blockquote> </html>