John A. Tuttle asked in 981124 MMDigest:

> In my on-going pursuit of knowledge, I ask that anyone possessing
> any scientific studies on the factors that effect the stability of
> a piano tuning, please forward those studies to me or tell me where
> to find them.

My highly uncontrolled response to this is to suggest that John
contacts a medium and holds a long seance with George Steck, the
builder of the famed Steck piano.

After a short spell of trying to compete with Steinway in the 1860s,
Steck realised that Steinway got their remarkable tonal results largely
by over-stressing the piano.  Even today Steinways are not notably
stable -- and for their high-profile life where a tuner is expected
to touch them up before recitals anyway, this isn't too important.

By that time he'd almost built a Steinway clone, so what he did was
to keep the basic design but detune it slightly with one size smaller
strings.  This gave a very similar but softer tone and far greater
stability, and for the rest of his long life Steck continually
experimented to try and achieve a piano that would never need tuning
once it left the factory.

There was a saying that, if you put one size heavier strings on a Steck
and brought it back up to pitch, you ended up with a pile of matchwood
and tangled wire and grave injuries -- or a Steinway !

The best measure of his success I can quote is that I once had a 1912
British-made (so not even genuine) Steck 65-note upright player, that
in 1967 had the original strings, had not been tuned in ten years, and
wasn't more than a cent or two out anywhere.

According to the rebuilders' lore, he achieved this by specifying not
only the best possible wood for the plank (pinblock) but the soundboard
as well.  The rationale for this was that if the piano stayed stable
throughout the seasons, which required a good soundboard, tuners would
not be tempted to tweak it, so the pins would remain undisturbed.

My apologies for responding to this scientific enquiry in such an
anecdotal light.  Should anyone do any further work on George Steck,
I'd really like to know whether it was true that he ran three families
at once, in different houses.

Dan Wilson, London