And it may be that bridge location relative to centerline is nowhere near as important as bridge location relative to soundboard edge (and, of course, the stiffness of that edge).  Think of the tonal effect of a bass bridge too close to the rim, or of floating the soundboard at the bass bridge, or a treble bridge too close to the belly rail. <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr" > <hr size="1"> From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman@cox.net> To: pianotech@ptg.org Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 11:09 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] David Love--Centering the bridge--was S&S something er other </div> On 5/23/2012 9:46 PM, <a ymailto="mailto:mike.spalding1@frontier.com" href="mailto:mike.spalding1@frontier.com">mike.spalding1@frontier.com</a> wrote: > I like Dale's perception of this question. Different configurations > of bridge relative to centerline may have different tonal > characteristics, but not necessarily better or worse. and other > factors, such as soundboard thinning and rib end scallops, can skew > it one way or the other. Yes, there are way too many variables to start presuming the tonal nuances of centering bridges on ribs with no way to isolate the effect from all the myriad potential causes. From a design standpoint, I do it to what degree I can because that's the point of least compromised response, and I'd like to have some sort of standard as a starting place. By the time you throw in scaling, panel thinning, panel compression levels, rib stiffness and loading, hammer choice and voicing, and the phase of the moon, it will sound how it sounds, and you just can't pick it apart minutely as specific cause and effect details by looking at the complex mix. Ron N </div> </div>