[CAUT] Thank you for Stability advice

[Ed Sutton]

If we are doing high level piano work, we are often operating in the area of perceptual thresholds.
This puts us in peculiar territory when we try to make cause/effect statements about what we are doing.

Ed S.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Love 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 5:17 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] Thank you for Stability advice


  Got it.  I guess I won't comment further about pretending to do something to that one note the customer didn't quite like.  Somebody might actually be reading this!

   

  David Love

  www.davidlovepianos.com

   

  From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm
  Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 2:05 PM
  To: caut at ptg.org
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] Thank you for Stability advice

   

  Hey, I agree entirely. My purpose in writing what I did was to try to bridge the gap (no pun intended) between those who seat and those who don't, by acknowledging that seating does have a sonic effect. People started doing it because it did something perceptible, more often positive than negative. At least in the short term. If you say something implying it's the same as doing nothing (fiddling around a bit until the customer thinks you did something, or the like), we end up talking at cross purposes. The seaters continue to say that, "yes indeedy, it does have an effect. That other guy must not have actually tried it." And so actual communication doesn't take place. 

  Regards,

  Fred

              

  On Feb 9, 2010, at 1:28 PM, David Love wrote:





  I was being a bit facetious about the placebo effect in the sense of perceived change in tone but not in the sense of a cure for the problem.  I wasn't really my goal to start a thread on the placebo effect.   That aside, anytime you change the contact point on the bridge by tapping or pressing or pulling  or bending you'll likely get some change in the sound.  That change may be a positive one, or not (it doesn't always work).  If the bridge pin is notched and is the cause of the tonal problem (which it can be) then tapping the string down away from that notch can improve things, at least temporarily.  Eventually, and often quickly, the string will want to straighten and find its way back to the notch in the bridge pin.  That's why some people prefer to tap the bridge pin rather than the string (knowingly or not), because it moves the bridge pin notch down closer to the bridge cap and  unifies those two contact points.  However, because of the clamping effect of the pin on the string it can also simply further indent the edge of the bridge so that during the next humidity cycle the problems will either reappear or, if the humidity rises, further damage that edge.  So the question really is whether it's a permanent fix and and/or whether it doesn't create more problems in the long run by incurring even further damage to the edge of the bridge top.  My experience is that the fix is at best temporary, at worst it doesn't work and just encourages more aggressive tapping operating under the belief that it should work and thereby creating more problems.  If the problem is flagpolling then it doesn't work because tapping the pin down won't stop the flagpolling problem.    In that case there are other remedies that can be considered.  At least that's my take on it.   

   

   

   
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