CA and Bridge Pins

[Richard Brekne]

Hi List

Ran into an interesting experience with CA application on bridge pins I
wanted to share with you all. I got to thinking about the discussion we had
a couple weeks back, about the need to remove the strings etc...

It struck me that the strings exert all this side pressure on the bridge
pins and that perhaps there was some benifit to exploiting this in applying
the CA... to keep the pressure on sideways. I wondered if this was going to
be as big a problem in terms of CA getting on the strings, building up
under strings..etc and how much work was going to be involved in cleaning
that up.

Something about this sideways pressure was to ...er... seductive shall I
say... so having the perfect beater to try it out on I decided to give it a
shot. I mean heck the worst that could happen was that I would have this
big mess I would have to clean up on my own time.

What I can tell you is this.. There was indeed quite a tendency to build up
under the strings across the bridge.. especially in deeper string marks on
the bridge top. Also noticed quite a buildup down the notch under the
string, and the pitch of the piano actually rose quite a bit as this
buildup caused a defacto shortening of the strings. Sounded horrible
really, very inprecise termination CA makes.. grin.. But the suprising
thing was how easy it was to clean all the excess off.

Simply loosening the string was enough. I loosened each string enough to
pull it off the bridge, used a screwdriver to scrap lightly the excess CA
which almost fell off on its own. In a few places where I had applied more,
I had to sort of "re-notch" the bridge.. but I wouldnt compare this to
actuall renotching. It was really easy.

This old 9 foot over overly neglected Bechstein also got a dressup of the
hammer heads, spread reset and a quick regulation done and hasnt sounded so
good in many many years. Falsness in this instrument which was nothing
short of rampant virtually dissapeared over the whole range of the piano.
Couldnt believe the results.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway