[CAUT] Stuart & Son on NPR

[Ron Nossaman]

On 1/20/2011 2:33 PM, Fred Sturm wrote:

> And actually the stamped part is not that important from a tonal point
> of view, looking at the patent drawing. It just holds the other things
> in place and spreads the strings. The actual bearing is separate pieces
> of "wood or metal" (I think I'd choose metal <G>).

That's right.


>I would expect,
> though, that the screw holding it to the bridge might get loose over
> time (the wood would compress against it like a flange), so you might
> end up with a very serious lack of positive coupling of string to bridge
> (thinking of Ed's description of the whistling sound).

Yes, like any surface mount bridge agraffe, including the Stuart and the 
Phoenix.


>But it seems like
> the real downfall of the idea was the fact that it was a cheap
> substitute, so was likely to be put together with less care, and on
> cheaper and less well-designed instruments.

I don't know why you're so determined to keep pounding on "cheap". If 
they cost $50K each, and were made from hand polished titanium, the 
termination would still be whatever was chosen as an insert, and it 
would still be held down by a screw. I really don't see where cheap is 
so detrimental, or even a factor. As you said above, the stamped part 
isn't that important from a tonal point of view, and there's no reason 
for a cheap stamped part to be necessarily non-functional, or even inferior.
Ron N