--On Tuesday, March 30, 2004 12:51 AM -0500 David Skolnik <davidskolnik@optonline.net> wrote: > Fred and Marc..can you tell me what is accomplished by sanding (or > planing) out the string grooves? As much as we are cautioned about "over > tapping" the strings to the bridge, it seems it would be a lot easier to > do serious damage in the groove-removal effort. Likewise, unless the > bridge edge has been mangled, what would be the purpose of renotching? David, I agree with what Mark wrote on this. A wee bit of expansion: I don't resurface and renotch as a matter of course. I examine the bridge first. If I find, as I would lay almost any odds that I would on the instrument Jeff described, that there are fairly deep grooves and signs of wood crushing close to the front bridge pins, lesser similar symptoms toward the back pins, and considerably less grooving in the middle of the bridge, I will definitely pull pins, resurface and renotch. My take is that most of this wood crushing would have been caused by tapping, a lesser portion by humidity swings, with motion of the strings causing the least. If there are very shallow grooves, pretty even over the top of the bridge, I will omit the step (unless I see notching issues). I believe that termination must be as crisp as reasonably possible, which means I don't want wood contacting the front termination of the string around a portion of the circumference, just tangentially. The more experience I get, the more fussy I get about termination, as I find it is definitely one of the major factors in quality of tone production. I'd rate it much higher than fine adjustment of downbearing, for example (obviously within parameters). Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico
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