Fred, Yes I believe also that tapping is not harmless, that is why I was instructed to tap VERY LIGHTLY in front of the bridge pins. Less than perfect terminations there are not uncommon, and that oblige us to mask the defect with power in the hammer. I am feeling wet always if I have to pull the pins, resurface and notch, as a only mistake there will have a note which is definitively too different. On the bass bridge it is easy , on the contrary, to plan the bridge to as to have positive bearing on the front, and renotch. This can help a lot to avoid muddy but explosive sounding basses, that I believe are due to the DB force applied from the Back of the bridge, hence a less efficient front termination. Does it make sense ? Regards. Isaac OLEG David, I agree with what Mark wrote on this. A wee bit of expansion: I don't resurface and renotch as a matter of course. I examine the bridge first. If I find, as I would lay almost any odds that I would on the instrument Jeff described, that there are fairly deep grooves and signs of wood crushing close to the front bridge pins, lesser similar symptoms toward the back pins, and considerably less grooving in the middle of the bridge, I will definitely pull pins, resurface and renotch. My take is that most of this wood crushing would have been caused by tapping, a lesser portion by humidity swings, with motion of the strings causing the least. If there are very shallow grooves, pretty even over the top of the bridge, I will omit the step (unless I see notching issues). I believe that termination must be as crisp as reasonably possible, which means I don't want wood contacting the front termination of the string around a portion of the circumference, just tangentially. The more experience I get, the more fussy I get about termination, as I find it is definitely one of the major factors in quality of tone production. I'd rate it much higher than fine adjustment of downbearing, for example (obviously within parameters). Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico _______________________________________________ caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
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