Unwrapped ends of bass strings

[John Delacour]

At 14:11 03/10/01 -0400, Newton Hunt wrote:
> > Your bridge pins are in a continuous (not the usual zig-zag) line.
>
>Hmmm.  That could account for a mm of variation but not the ten to
>twelve we are seeing here.  I have not had a problem with that in the
>past, just recently.  Good thought though and thanks.

To judge from your jpeg, I would say it would account for _precisely_ the 
error that I see.  Even a bit of scaled down ascii art in Courier 12 shows 
about a 7 mm. error.  The jpeg shows an error slightly more than the 
thickness of the agraffe -- 8 mm at most.


     0--------------------0____0-------------¤
          0---------------0____0-------------¤
0--------------------0____0----------------¤
      0---------------0____0----------------¤


     0--------------------0____0-------------¤
          0-------------0____0-------------¤
0--------------------0____0----------------¤
      0-------------0____0----------------¤


By the way, I fitted a new bass set to a Steinway B in the customers house 
the other week and came to one string of a pair where I had made the cover 
about 7 mm. too short.  The customer was present as I said "Damn, I've made 
that one too short!".  Before I had a chance to say "...I'll have to make 
another one there", he said, "It's not going to make any difference, is 
it?".  "Probably not", I replied; and in fact the error was not noticeable 
in the tuning.  Since Steinway pairs are false pairs to start with (i.e. 
different lengths), old Theodore had obviously discovered it didn't make a 
scrap of difference -- he didn't make many design decisions without a lot 
of research and experimentation.  The achievement of the slimmer bass 
bridge was more important than the perfect pairing of the bichords.

JD