Andrew, Just jumping in on this matter at the last minute, I may have missed the opportunity to say something worthwhile. But at the risk of being redundant you may want to check out these few comments. I have had three encounters with tuning pianos with cracked or cracking plates. The first was in the storeroom of Renard pianos in the Bronx. I was tuning and suddenly the strings at a certain note just didn't pull up correctly. Of course I had a fit and worried until the boss humanely excused me from the accident. The second was tuning a Baldwin upright at the UN . When I reached a certain treble note a WOWWWWwwwww excreted from the piano. Willie Clare was horrified, and we exchanged expletives for a few moments but Baldwin eventually picked up and replaced the instrument. The third was a Bosendorfer whose plate struts were so bent on inspection I was afraid to tune the piano at all for fear of a string blast of 20,000 lbs that would have blown me out of Eddie Palmieri;s living room. So I called Steve Fairchild. I have no idea what happened to the piano. The bottom line is you, as a tuner are failsafe. The strings will snap before the plate cracks. If the plate cannot sustain the additional tension of string tuned beyond the snapping point, it is defective. If, heaven forbid, the client wants to blame you, my best advice would be to sue everybody, especially the maker. Dan Franklin
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