On Feb 8, 2010, at 12:41 PM, David Love wrote: > The placebo effect refers generically to the patient believing that > a fix has been administered. snip > Why should strings need to be encouraged to touch the bridge surface > when you have bridge pins at a 20 degree angle clamping them to the > bridge. If the bridge is indented at the edge from aggressive > string seating or cycles of expansion and squeezing the string > against the bridge pin and the bridge top I suppose a massage of the > string might push it down against the bridge surface temporarily, > but it’s likely to be pretty temporary. Hi David, A fair number of people believe that tapping bridge pins and "seating strings" on the bridge (by various means) has a positive sonic effect. Maybe 15-20 years or so ago, when somebody writing in the PTJ was promoting, I did a fair bit myself, and can testify that it often gave obvious results. And there are still a number of people teaching these techniques (I think Bill Spurlock continues to teach lightly tapping pins, and Wally Brooks recommends tapping strings, for example). And I think they are right in saying that it has an effect, not just "in the mind" as is implied by the word placebo: in many cases, the tone color is cleaned up and false beats are reduced or eliminated. I also agree with you that it is temporary. Seems that many of those who swear by these various techniques do it as a matter of course, every time they see the piano. Hmmmm. Looks like a vicious cycle to me. I don't think it has to be all that aggressive to create the condition where there will be a recurring gap between string and bridge surface at the notch, resulting in recurring sonic results. The problematic mental image is the notion that strings "ride up" bridge pins and need to be re-seated. This is the concept Ron N has spent so much effort trying to combat, with limited success. Strings could certainly ride up vertical bridge pins, other conditions being favorable (could possibly be an issue with Wapin, for instance), but not angled pins in the standard configuration. In any case, I don't think the word placebo is appropriate. I would describe it instead as giving a drug which masks symptoms, but has a long term effect of exacerbating the condition. Otherwise, I agree with your assessment. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100209/21d948cc/attachment.htm>
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