Some time back, I was speculating on bridge layout methods of preventing interference between rows of pins at the point where the back row of one unison interferes with the front row of the next unison down scale. I overlooked one possibility. Tuning a Young Chang G-150 last week, I was just sort of staring out there somewhere as the 3/4 - full semitone pitch raise progressed without me when something about the tenor bridge caught my attention. I noticed that no obvious attempt had been made to juggle pin row spacing, speaking length progression, or pin angle to accommodate that interference point, and thought "wait a minute, how did they do that"? Then I noticed the pin inclination angle. They were very nearly vertical. Looked to me to be under 5°, both front and back. The offset angle (stagger) was in a more normal 10-12° range. After I got it up to pitch where I could hear how it was going to sound, the result made me dig out my rocker gauge and do a quick and dirty bearing check. The only positive bearing on the whole long bridge was on a half dozen notes in the middle of the top section. The combination of no - to - probably negative bearing through most of the piano, and the near vertical bridge pins made for a rather unique sound quality. This piano has an amazingly heavy plate too (I overshot the pitch raise). Sigh. Ron N
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