> ...and the reason(s) for this phenomenon is/are what exactly? Â Ron N. > has made compelling arguments in the past that it is not the string > stretching over time. Â So what does that leave...wire bends? the > bridge? the soundboard? > > Alan Eder It's the bridge. Many times, I've found a unison I'd pulled up a bit settling some as I tuned the other two strings. I found I could get the same effect pulling up a single string, settling it where I wanted it normally, and whacking it one good one. It often dropped just a tad. The strings sometimes render through the bridge fairly easily and quickly, sometimes with great difficulty, and usually to some degree in between. In the bottom half of the scale, this delayed drop doesn't usually happen because the mass of the vibrating string provides enough oomph (technical term) to pull the string through immediately, I think. The pitch drop on "whack" thing starts being noticeable somewhere above octave four as the strings are getting too short and light to produce a really big tsunami impulse wave that helps render the string through the bridge on the attack. Pulling pitch up and coming back later to tune gives the strings time to creep over the bridge some, so they aren't doing it so much when you do the tuning. That's my take, and the only thing I've thought of or heard that makes sense to me. Ron N
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