bridges/seating

[A440A@aol.com]

 Greetings all,
Ron Nossaman writes;

"The real problem is the loose bridge pin and can be cleared up by epoxying
(or CA) them in solidly. This isn't a casual field repair <snip>It's time
consuming, expensive, and traumatic to most folks. That's why most techs
continue to take the easy out and "seat" the strings as they shorten the long
term service life of the instrument.  <snip> Just remember to consider
seating strings on bridges to be an emergency only procedure, not a daily
practice."

       Well,  gee,  I gotta weigh in on the other side of this coin.  I find
that a light tap does a tremendous job of getting rid of false beats.  I
don't know about permanent removal of problems, but years and years of clean
treble unisons following this seating has been my experience.
     Perhaps we all do a little different treatment.  I don't drive the
string into the bridge,  I lightly tap the string, in the speaking length,
downward and sideways into the center of the angle formed by the bridgepin
and the cap. It takes very little force, and out of two octaves, there will
be a third of the notes drop 5 or more cents.  This seems to indicate that
some slack has been found.
   I personally think that the straightening of the wire's slight meniscus in
front of the bridgepin is responsible for much of the drop.  An improvement
in the phase relationships of the strings seems as obvious to my ears as the
difference made when the three strings of a trichord are leveled. ( as well,
imho, it should.  We are talking about evening the restorative forces in the
strings here, just like the Robinson "Straight-Mate" is designed to do under
the capo and agraffes, no?)
      The difference in clarity and the lack of falsebeats for long periods
of time, take this treatment out of the emergency category for me.  It is
standard operating procedure.

Regards,

Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn.

{ hope that don't look like a rant,  there sure have been some dang sensitive
people on this list, of late.  (:)}}