The Mother of all Bellyrails

Ron Nossaman RNossaman@cox.net
Sun, 09 Feb 2003 11:39:55 -0600


>You can just see that the tail of the tenor bridge and the transition 
>bridge are both on the same maple base piece. It curves around just inside 
>of the plate curve. Nicely stiff and massive.

Good, good...


>What you can't see is that they whole thing also floats just like the 
>bass. And, also just like the bass, it has a network of added spacers and 
>monster buttons.
>
>Del


Strange and wonderful. It's gratifying to see evidence that a few brave 
souls actually had an idea and tried something unorthodox to see if it 
worked - even when it didn't. I wonder if they went back up the production 
line and changed the assembly at some point, or just kept adding the 
buttons and shoring through the entire model run. I also wonder how many of 
these are still out there. I get the idea from this kind of thing, that 
there wasn't (usually isn't?) an R&D system, where a prototype was (is) 
built and "debugged" (at least heard in it's finished state) before it was 
put in production. It's like they didn't hear what the first finished one 
sounded like until the 120th was already in process of being built. But 
even if a prototype is built, how often does the production model even 
vaguely resemble it?

At least it looks like you've got plenty of iron left if you grind a couple 
pounds off to move the bass bridge down some for back scale length. Not 
that the movers will appreciate your efforts, but...

Ron N


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