<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> I notice that I also do not have nearly as many strings break as I did when I was a beginner.  But it's because most pianos nowadays are ones I've serviced before (90-95%) and have up to pitch, whereas when I was a beginner nearly every piano I serviced had been neglected for years, and I needed to do a lot more pitchraises. Regards, Clyde Isaac OLEG SIMANOT wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>When I was a beginner tuner I had a few strings broken because of jerking. Actually I use a much softer method, did not break a string in years (even on some rusty old out of pitch pianas I had put in a little better shape sometime).</blockquote> </body> </html>