false beats from ?? -...

[Ric Brekne]

Funny... last I heard someone actually lifted a string off the bridge 
and found it was capable (sometimes) of staying there.  The fact is that 
the overwhelming amount of pianotechs dont bother trying to <<defend>> 
the point because the vast majority of us see routinely pianos which 
have strings not in contact with the bridge. And we find that 
appropriate tapping of these same improves the sound and alliviates the 
occurance of the occasional click of a string seating itself.  

As for the feeler gauge bit... for those of you wishing to actually try 
and test this for yourself... try loosening 10 strings enough for you to 
sneak a single strand of human hair under the string at the middle of 
the bridge on a few different pianos. Upon tightening the strings again 
with no tapping see how often you can pull the hair out.

Try this stuff out instead of just listening to someones opinions.  It 
gets really fun actually. 

Cheers
RicB

Ron N wrote:

Last I heard, there were a number of people who
were going out in the world with feeler gages to prove me wrong, and
show us that strings really do climb bridge pins, but we haven't
heard back from any of them with their flood of corroborating
evidence. Perhaps it's because they haven't found that evidence
because pins really don't climb bridge pins, and the string is
always in contact with the bridge cap, though often not at the very
edge of the notch where cyclic humidity swings have crushed the cap.