My sister bought an upright player piano a year or two ago, from
someone who claimed to be a good rebuilder, and further claimed that
the piano was in excellent shape.

Two weeks after she got it home, little flies started showing up in her
house.  Hunting down the source, she found that there was some sort of
nest inside the piano in a hole she couldn't reach without disassembling
the piano.  Eventually, the flies quit hatching.

She then called a tuner to tune the piano, but after a couple minutes,
the guy said he wouldn't tune it because it would just be out of tune
in a day or two; the pins were that loose.

I don't know if he was exaggerating or not, but he offered to replace
the pinblock and put in new strings for about $3,000.

I don't know anything more specific than that about it's condition, but
she's not using the piano because it's out of tune, and can't afford to
pay another $3,000 for the pinblock replacement.

The piano is in Iowa.  I began to wonder whether adding a good piano
humidifier would cause the pinblock to swell just enough that the pins
would be tight enough for someone to tune.  Has anyone done this, and
if so, what humidity did you have to have for this to work?  I realize
it would depend on the condition of this piano; just looking for ballpark
estimates, and whether the rest of the piano mechanism would suffer too
much to make this a good idea.  Thank you!

Bill Mackin