John and all, Sounds like an ex-piano to me. I wouldn´t have taken the chance of raising the pitch to 440 or 435 for that matter. This lady probably didn´t have other instruments to play with it. If the piano would have been British I wouldn´t have been as shy of doing the raise. DON´T MISUNDERSTAND ME, not because of the "quality" of British pianos but the nature of the strings. Isn´t it true that strings in British pianos have a lower carbon content than others and are therefore less prone to breaking? I´ve never had trouble with these kinds of strings, except that thy sound dull. P.S Do you by any chance, (not wishing to raise a discussion, please, this flamesuit is giving me an itch!) perfect pitch and do therefore have a problem with non-440 tunings) Kristinn Leifsson, Reykjavík, Iceland At 09:54 22.12.1999 -0700, you wrote: >As "luck" would have it, I had to tune a customer's piano at 7:00pm last >night. Pre 1900 Beckwith ( made/sold by Sears ). Typical of the last >piano of a day for a very tired tuner - 4 hammers missing, cracked high >treble bridge, and 96c low of A-440. ( Yeah, I know that standard pitch >was 435 when that piano was built. ) The lady told me it belonged to her >grandparents whom, she remembers, talked about tuning it - several times, >but does not remember it ever being done. Went over it once to bring it >to 50c low, then with her OK went the rest the way to A-440 with no >string breakage. All that except for the last octave where the bridge is >split. Oh, and yes, I will be working on it again next week - in the >evening again. :-( >John Fortiner >Billings, MT. > >ps regarding honest customers - she paid cash on the spot. >___________________________________________________________________ >Why pay more to get Web access? >Try Juno for FREE -- then it's just $9.95/month if you act NOW! >Get your free software today: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. > >
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