Bridge Seating (was Re: Where to notch a bridge, & relative effects ????? (Advice sought)

[Ric Brekne]

Hi William

I dont think many of us question that string seating is at best a short 
term fix if the bridge no longer presents a continuous surface of 
positive bearing for the string to seat on. Nor is there any argument 
that in said condition the real problem is the bridge itself and that 
any insistence on seating can worsen the condition.

Where the disagreement comes in is whether or not a string can indeed be 
unseated in the face of a bridge that DOES provide a positive bearing 
over its entire surface. As I understand Rons position, he simply 
discounts this as a possibility citing friction numbers and pin angles 
as being prohibitive factors.  The problem with this is that in real 
life one actually DOES find pianos with unseated strings despite there 
being nothing wrong with the bridge or the bearing surface it provides.

Not being able to imagine or explain how a thing can occur has no 
bearing whatsoever on the occurrence  itself.  If one can observe the 
phenomena, then it occurs despite any lack of an explanation as to why 
or how.

Cheers
RicB


    Hi Jonathan and list,

    ............
    Example: Seating strings.  Ron N. (and please correct me here, Ron,
    if I
    have made any egregious errors) has acknowledged the observed
    phenomena of a
    note becoming more clear after "seating."  Many techs think, "great,
    job
    done."  Ron's position on this is that when seating does seem to
    clean up a
    note, it is quite likely, that you've simply moved the string down
    (into the
    crushed notch edge), and TEMPORARILY cleaned up the note; that in a
    short
    period of time that string will be "unseated" again.  So what we've
    accomplished is getting it to sound OK until we leave the scene or
    shortly
    thereafter, when the real problem is in the bridge cap............



    Regards,
    William R. Monroe