Related to the massage discussion, I'd like to throw out my experience with seating strings to the bridges. I use a hammer shank, given a very light tap by a standard size hammer. I find I'm usually taking the time for this procedure on Asian grands, hoping to clear up false beats & improve the tone. This doesn't gravely affect the pitch in the bass & low tenor, but the pitch drops considerably from the mid section to the high treble. I often see a pitch drop of maybe 60 cents by the top octave. Which of course means another pitch correction pass (or two) to stabilize the situation. It seems to me that when going over the tuning it is even more unstable than if I were doing a similar amount of pitch correction (without touching the bridge seating). The good news is that the tone is improved. The bad news is that I worry about the stability of the unisons in the following days & weeks. Should I be pre-selling a follow-up tuning when doing string seating? What are your thoughts/experiences? Patrick
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