John, Your points are well taken...but here is my big question regarding the whole after-stringing downbearing measuring concept. The innate inaccuracy from any of these techniques, given the strings' speaking length tendency to deflect and vibrate while your fussing with whatever tool, will yield a measurement that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Add to that that since changes in the downbearing at this point can be made locally with vertical hitch pins, but only globally (moving the plate) with standard hitch pins...what does a very time consuming very localized measurement buy you? If you are going to change the bearing you would most likely do it globally( unless there are vertical hitchpins throughout) and that change would be monitored empirically anyway, ie by ear. So my thinking would be come up with a way to "get a reasonable sense" of the static downbearing quickly and proceed with an informed, but ear guided response. The big reason I see for being able to very accurately measure after-stringing downbearing is to compare it to the projected board deflection you predicted prior to setting downbearing, to see it you are predicting the affect of string loading reasonably accurately for future projects. Jim I
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