String massage

[Ron Nossaman]

>> I have serious doubts that it's possible to kink a string in this section
>of
>> the scale by a single point deflection without breaking the string.
>
>Well, I have little doubt. You see, the book I read also had pictures! So I
>have seen it. Fortunately, the pictures were taken at many angles such that
>if you watch the light reflect off the strings you will in fact see that
>there is a little dent right where you (er, a, I mean the guy in the book)
>push with your brass rod.

Sounds like pretty good evidence to me. That being the case, there's one
more possible snake in the weeds. if pressing on a string with a small
radius(?) tool will bend it, won't sliding this tool along the string at a
similar pressure do the same damage over more of the speaking length? There
has been some discussion here about taking a string past it's yield point,
and the acoustic consequences. A kink in the string would have to mean that
some portion of that string was stressed past it's plastic deformation
point, so sliding the tool down a string would do similar damage over more
of the string. Wouldn't it? The heat generated is probably negligible, but
I would tend to be concerned about the cumulative effect of doing this on a
regular basis. It might be interesting to see if  the string's partial
structure changes with the procedure. Seems to me that it would have to.
There is another possible concern that struck me years ago as I watched
someone stretch new strings with the pulley-on-a-handle tool. The strings
were at pitch when the stretching started, and the deflection from the
pressure applied was pretty dramatic. It occurred to me that the front
termination edge of the bridge had just been subjected to repeated
applications of a bearing angle somewhere between five and ten times what
was intended, at tensions considerably above standard. Maybe it's utterly
harmless and I'm just an old spoilsport, but it didn't strike me as a real
good idea then, and it still doesn't.  

I'm really not trying to be difficult here, just a little concerned about
possible consequences. 

BTW, equalizing string tensions across the nut by deflecting the string
segments is SOP for guitar tuning, but finger pressure is adequate in that
case.


Ron N