lifting strings

[Jenneetah]

At 2:56 PM +0200 9/30/04, Stéphane Collin wrote:
>My problem is that I have a hard time to do an accurate job here. 
>The strings respond very well to the first hook pull, but after 
>that, to refine the string height, I find that some strings still 
>respond to hook pull, some others no way and stay at the same height.

I've run into that too, and assumed that strings simply have a limit 
as to how high you can lift them. Use it up and you've hit the wall. 
To avoid using up this limit, I try to do my string lifting in as 
small motions as possible (as with unison tuning). This will also 
save you the headache of finding a lifted string badly overshot and 
having to lift the other two strings (which were probably just fine 
as they were). It could also be that your initial "global" lifting is 
using up more of that available lift than is necessary.

>I try then to lower the strings that are too high by knocking on 
>them close to the agraffee with a caoutchouc hammer on a brass rod, 
>but again, some will get down, some others no way.  I end up with a 
>quite good but not perfect job, which saddens me much.

I've never been able to lower strings. Lifting them works because 
your bending the string around something. In its direction, lowering 
has nothing to bend the string around. You hit it with the brass rod 
and what happens? It probably just jumps downwards off the 
capo/aggraphe momentarily.

Your piece of aluminum is quite good at telling you if the three 
strings are not parallel with its bottom surface. Can it also tell 
you whether its bottom is parallel with the hammer strike point 
(across the width of the hammer), which itself should be parallel 
with the keybed.

The Una Corda pedal will.