I can attest to extremes of skin chemistry. At a gig once where I was playing electric guitar another band asked to borrow our gear for a song or two. I lent their guitarist my newly-strung instrument, and when he returned it a few minutes later the strings were rusty and dead. After that I made sure I asked 'do you have sweaty hands?' before granting similar requests.
For pipers, the secret is to play pipe music, thus eliminating any need for metal keys :-)> -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
