And now for something completely different. I tuned an older Yamaha G7 yesterday for the umpteenth time and noticed yet again how huge the brass bridge pins looked. The difference was that I miced them this time to finally find out just how big they are. The treble section came in at 0.101, or about 2.6 mm. That's about half way between #8 and #9 by U.S supply house reckoning, and these were the smallest in the piano. The rest of the tenor section had 0.111, or about 2.8mm. That's 0.003" bigger than #9s. The bass went from 0.119" (3mm), to 0.146" (3.7mm), or from 0.010 over #9, to 0.011 over #10. That's a lot of brass! All this doesn't really mean anything, but I thought it was interesting, and it IS piano related, in case the topic cops have a contract out on me by now. Another observation/question: The fore/aft spacing between rows of bridge pins within a unison tends to become much wider in the low tenor than in the treble, and in longer scales more so than in shorter ones. Is this mostly to prevent having to carve away half of the bridge when notching, or is there a more exotic reasoning behind it than I'm aware of? Ron N
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