Bluthner Grand Bridge

[John W. McKone]

>Re embeding bridge pins
>
>Newton, I discovered the power of this technique more or less by accident
>some years
>ago when I treated a no-name church baby grand .  Complaint was buzzing bass
>strings in the upper bass.  After aurally  confirming the complaint I
>visually noted
>cracks along each side of the bridge pins in the upper section of the bass
>bridge.
>The lower bass section looked OK but the strings were rather tubby.
>
>After letting down the tension on every other string in the upper bass, I
>moved the
>strings sideways to give me working room.  I then pulled out the bridge pins
>with
>my needle nose pliers (for most of them  I could have used my fingers), and
>dropped
>a drop of medium viscosity epoxy (5 minute type) into the hole. Working
>quickly I
>then reinserted the bridge pins in their proper holes.  Then I repositioned
>the bass
>strings and brought them up to tension.  I repeated the process with the
>other
>alternate bass strings.  When I was sinished I had plenty of epoxy left so I
>treated
>the lower bass bridge pins also, even though they had no visible cracks and
>many of
>them took quite a bit of tugging to remove.
>
>End result:  As expected the upper bass strings lost their buzz and sounded
>crisp
>and clear.  But, surprise surprise . . .   no trace of tubbiness in the lower
>bass
>strings.  They sounded brand new.
>
>Conclusion:  To reenew the sound of tubby bass strings, try renewing the
>intimate
>fit between bridge pin and bridge.
>
>Jim DeRocher, RPT & MPT & PhD


While I'm sure that epoxying the lower bass section did help improve the
tone some, I think that often a lot of "tubbiness" in this section can be
removed by merely lowering, and then reinstating the tension in the
strings.  The quick fix can have remarkable results in strings that have a
lot if gunk (technical term :) ) in the windings.

I'm inclined to think that some of the tone improvement you gained came
from this effect.

That being said, I must say that I'm a huge fan of solid termination points...



John McKone, RPT
Operations Manager
Haugen's Pianos
Twin Cities