M&A A

[RicB]

Hi folks

Just got back from the Høgskolen here in town (a university level 
educational institution).  I just took over the contract after the older 
fellow who'd been there for years retired. In my first round of tuning, 
taking a look at, and in general assessing the some 50 instruments I 
tuned and cleaned up a bit an older Mason and Hamlin A.  Serial number 
26908.  This thing had thee most massive long bridge I've ever noticed 
on an instrument before. Absolutely harmongous.  At least 1&5/8s inches 
wide... all kinds of room for each unison both sideways and 
forward/backwards.

A couple other points of interest..... there were very very many quite 
large cracks at the bridge pins.. strangely enough nearly all on the 
left string of each unison.. but there were some exception.  In spite of 
this I found only one unison in the treble range...actually from about 
C5 upwards with any kind of noticeable false beats.... and that was B6 
and it was one of the few unisons where the bridge had absolutely no 
cracks around the bridge pins. 

Curiousity got the best of me and so I loosened both B6 to see how tight 
those pins were.... and they were quite tight.  Then I checked one of 
the pins with a crack around the bridge pin hole and sure enough I could 
pull the thing out with my fingers.

Not so strange perhaps that I have developed a healthy chunck of 
skeptism to this without further ado idea that loose bridge pins 
<<cause>> false beats.

Cheers
RicB