Funny... last I heard someone actually lifted a string off the bridge and found it was capable (sometimes) of staying there. The fact is that the overwhelming amount of pianotechs dont bother trying to <<defend>> the point because the vast majority of us see routinely pianos which have strings not in contact with the bridge. And we find that appropriate tapping of these same improves the sound and alliviates the occurance of the occasional click of a string seating itself. As for the feeler gauge bit... for those of you wishing to actually try and test this for yourself... try loosening 10 strings enough for you to sneak a single strand of human hair under the string at the middle of the bridge on a few different pianos. Upon tightening the strings again with no tapping see how often you can pull the hair out. Try this stuff out instead of just listening to someones opinions. It gets really fun actually. Cheers RicB Ron N wrote: Last I heard, there were a number of people who were going out in the world with feeler gages to prove me wrong, and show us that strings really do climb bridge pins, but we haven't heard back from any of them with their flood of corroborating evidence. Perhaps it's because they haven't found that evidence because pins really don't climb bridge pins, and the string is always in contact with the bridge cap, though often not at the very edge of the notch where cyclic humidity swings have crushed the cap.
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