Bass String Length Equality

[Farrell]

"Just how much variation in speaking length are we talking about here?"

Four millimeters per unison set. Strings run around 900 mm long. Now don't go and tell me 4 mm is of no consequence. I don't want to hear it! I already ran my nicely sanded beautiful first new bass bridge through my bandsaw and cut off the top inch of the bicord half of the bass bridge. As I write, I have a 3/4" chunk of quarter sawn maple and about 5 thin laminates of maple curing in epoxy on the bridge. I'll trim it tomorrow morning, reset bearing on this part of the bridge, re-drill and be right back in business.

For some reason, I strongly suspect I will think twice next time!

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Delwin D Fandrich" <pianobuilders@olynet.com>
 
  > >I am redoing an upright. I have notched the new bass bridge in the bicord 
  > >area. However, the pinned-cast-iron upper termination is in a horizontal 
  > >line, whereas the strings are at a fair angle - hence, the left string of 
  > >each bicord is a few millimeters longer than the right string. I should 
  > >think it fair to assume then that redoing this upper termination to 
  > >produce equal string lengths would be of some benefit.
  > 
  > Didn't you make the notches parallel to the top bridge, 

  I knew I should have sent this to you/Del privately. Egg on my face. Amazing what you can learn by just rebuilding one piano. Amazing what you did not know while rebuilding it. Amazing what seemed like the only way to do it, later seems so obviously stupid.

  No, I did not make the notches parallel to the top bridge. Indeed, would seem to be the logical thing to do. Ahh, hindsight.

  > or did you notch 
  > perpendicular to the strings?

  I'll give you one guess. Let's see how bright you really are!

Just how much variation in speaking length are we talking about here?

Del