>One other question Ron... God I hope I havent already asked this one... > >What difference does the type of metal the bridge pin is made out of have in >relation to all this.. Hard vs soft... stiff vs flexible.. etc.. any thoughts ? Hmmm, don't remember if you ever did or not. I've got my own problems. Who'd you say you were again? <G> I really don't have a clue about the bridge pin material. It seems to me that someone posted that some manufacturers used brass to try to minimize the effect, but I've found plenty of loose pin caused false beats in brass pinned pianos, so I have my doubts that it works all that well. In any case, there are a limited number of options available from supply houses and, since I haven't had any identifiable problems with what I'm using, I haven't done any experimentation on different materials. Perhaps Del has turned up something informative on this. I think the bridge pin is loose and simply flagpoling with the string vibration. A drop of CA around the pin stops the beat as effectively as a screwdriver blade, thumbnail, pencil eraser, or just about anything else you can use to damp the pin movement. Since that drop of CA isn't all that massy, I'd tend to discount the soundboard impedance explanation. It seems to me to be tied in with downbearing angle and either string length or frequency. It mostly seems to happen higher up the scale where (perhaps?) the flagpoling frequency of the loose pin is a relatively close multiple of the string frequency. I don't have the final answers here, but for me, this seems to most logically fit my observations and spot experiments. Tomorrow may be another story. Ron N
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