birdcage pitch?

[John Delacour]

At 21:06 +0100 21/3/08, Gregor _ wrote:

>It«s not so seldom that I see pianos a minor third flat. Usualy the 
>reason is that they were not tuned for 40 years. I bought such a 
>piano last year and tuned it in several passes up to 440 and it 
>turned out to be a very very nice piano (from 1900 or so) with a 
>really great sound (139 cm high) and 440 Hz worked very well. But I 
>was not brave enough to tune it on 440 first...

I see no advantage in doing the job gradually.  If anything, the 
flatter it is the _less_ likelyhood there is of string breakages when 
it is brought to pitch.  I just let down the string slightly first in 
case there is any rust to break and then yank it up to about A=445 as 
quick as I can.   Then I tune it.

I never touch cheap commercial over-damper pianos, but I have several 
really beautiful pianos that I am converting to under-damper and they 
will sell for very good money.  None of them, I hasten to add, is 
Irish!

JD