bridges/seating

Ron Nossaman nossaman@southwind.net
Tue, 08 Apr 1997 18:42:07 -0500 (CDT)


Ok guys, you got me. But how is this possible unless the bridge pins are notched  by string wear or something? (Evil spirits? Trickle down economy? Oops, sorry, same thing.) I've chased a lot of false beats without being able to verify this phenomenon, bu
t "There are more things in Heaven and Earth..." etc. I sure would find it a lot easier to believe if there were a good plausible explanation. I always have had the need to look under the rock and decide for myself. Incidentally, I have seen string dents
in removed bridge pins that could account for the thing, but that wouldn't me the case in a piano with new bridges & strings. Hmmmm...

Well, (drat!) I guess that's the WHAT. Now, who's got the WHY?


Eschew obfuscation!

                                 Ron Nossaman


>
>> I don't think
>> it's possible for a string, with measurable positive bearing, to ride up a pin (against
>> tension), slanted to force the string down on the bridge (against side bearing), and
>> stay there until someone knocks it back down where it belongs.
>
>That's exactly what happens.  We had one Steinway D that was used in
>1981 by 78% of the competitors.  It was tuned and tuned and tuned
>constantly, so it was *very* stable as far as the tuning pin setting and
>string segment settling were concerned.  After a hard workout, when
>some unisons had drifted (only slightly, of course [;>, but
>understandably), Pris and I found that most of the time, the strings had
>been _knocked upwards_ on the bridge pins from the heavy playing.
>Lightly tapping the string down onto the bridge put the unison back
>virtually perfectly in tune.  Go figure!?!
>
<snip>
>
>Joel Rappaport
>Round Rock, Texas
>
>




>I, too, was very skeptical of this until a colleague did a demonstration at a PTG chapter
>meeting. He put a wire-handled mute between two strings in the treble and lightly tapped
>one of those strings at a 45-degree angle just in front of the bridge. The mute changed
>angle about 10 degrees. It's hard to see the string move but you can't miss what the mute
>does when the string settles!
>
>--
>Thomas A. Cole, RPT
>Santa Cruz, California
>
>
>


 Ron Nossaman




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