I am seriously thinking about having my upright player (Standard
action) re-strung.  There are some pins that have very little grip
left so tuning doesn't last very long.

My tuner/technician says it is risky to re-string since there is no
way to know for sure if cracking has occurred in some layers of the pin
block and putting in a new pin block is very expensive.  Is it simply
a gamble to re-string or are there some ways to tell if a pin block is
bad?

Any ideas on what the going price should be for a re-string with
oversize pins (assuming I remove all the player guts in advance)?

Mike Concordia