<HTML>In a message dated 6/30/0= 3 9:17:07 PM Pacific Daylight Time, RNossaman@cox.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>I don't know if it's th= e backscale or not, but I'm willing to take the >word of those with a better grasp of the physics of it. > >Dave Stahl I don't know either, but that's not what I'm talking about. Ok, let's tr= y a simpler demonstration. You strip mute a piano that's flat enough to need= a pitch raise. You go up to some note in the killer octave or above. You t= une it up to pitch, not pounding it hard. Then you whack it a couple of time= s real good. The pitch very often drops, sometimes by a couple or more bea= ts per second (depending on how far you pulled it up to pitch). That's one lone string, all by itself, and the pitch drop comes from the back scale= . </BLOCKQUOTE> Ron, Thanks for the example.  That I can grasp easily enough.  I se= e(hear) it all the time in new pianos that I tune.  I often pound my wa= y through the treble chromatically all the way up to C-88, BEFORE I actually= start a pitch raise.  When I finally start with the tuning hammer, the= pitch is more representative of the actual tension of the string throughout= it's speaking and non-speaking lengths. Dave Stahl</HTML>