<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Hi Terry, while aggreeing on most points with most respected Dan M, (and others) I dont really adhere to this pounding buisness, not at least as I understand the word pounding to mean. Ok, you got to hit the keys hard, but no harder then the thumb and forfinger from about 2 inches away allow for. My experience tells me that any harder than this really accomplishes nothing, tho it may create the illusion of doing so. Regardless of how much you pound out over reasonalble hard play, you are still going to have to re-tune the piano in a few weeks... nothing really changes. (Flame suit not neccessary as I am inflamable... grin) Otherwise you pretty well sum it up in your origional post, new pianos... cheap ones that dont get enough attention at the factory especially.... in a location with no humidity controll and large variations in the humidity.... this is a prescription for unstablitity in tuning. Do your self a favour... read up, research as much as you can get your hands on about what is really known about humidity and how it affects instruments and their construction. Get yourself armed with authoritive information so that you can speak with authority to store owners and the like. And through the years put yourself in a position, through hard work and learned skill, where you can walk away from individuals who simply are not interested in understanding the truth of this matter. Untill then my freind, you are going to just have to make the best of it. Sometimes you will have to eat the proverbial sh--, from unfair and unreasonable types that you simply need cuz of money concerns. But know that you are correct in your assessment of the problem, and dont let it get you down or make you feel like "its you" and not the piano. You will get better control over stability concerns as it relates to hammer technique as time goes by anyways. But what you describe is more typical of other factors then hammer technique. (poor hammer technique normally shows results in a much shorter time... grin... like within a couple days.) If you like I can send you a few articles I have pertaining to humidity concerns that you may not have found. In addition there are routinely articles in the Journal. You should collect these and read them and all other pertainant information. Keep on keeping on.     -- Richard Brekne Associate PTG, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway  </html>