Lower Tenor Bridge "apron" crack

[Ron Nossaman]

> I'm attaching a photo of the lower end of the tenor bridge on a 
> Wurlitzer spinet.  The first two notes (lowest) sound pretty bad in 
> comparison to the rest of the piano.  Sort of nasal, and short on 
> sustain.  The customer asked me before I began tuning if I thought they 
> were out of tune.  They were in fact in pretty darn good intonation and 
> the unisons were good, but the notes had that nasal sound.
>  
> Upon inspection I can see some cracks starting at the bridge itself, but 
> you can also see a crack in the "apron" sort-of piece just above the 
> lowest part of that tenor bridge.  I'm wondering if that crack inhibits 
> transfer of vibration to a more flexible part of the soundboard that 
> would enhance sustain, and if I could repair it and improve the sound by 
> filling that crack with either epoxy or a variety of CA glue - maybe a 
> gel type.
>  
> Your opinions and insights would be appreciated.
>  
> Thanks in advance,
> John Dorr


Hi John,
I've got an Acrosonic in the shop at the moment (to repair 
both front legs that the mover broke off), that has a 
cantilevered apron in the low tenor. It sounds pretty hollow 
and nasal there too, with no apparent cracks. It's just nasty. 
Fixing the cracks in both the bridge and apron on the 
Wurlitzer, you'll most likely find that the sound didn't 
improve. While the string scaling isn't likely to be optimal, 
it at least has wrapped strings which are likely at higher 
tensions than plain wire would be, so I'd suspect the 
soundboard assembly first. Before you do anything else, try 
clamping a small Vise-Grip to one of the lower bridge pins at 
the low end of the treble bridge. That should help, or at 
least make it noticeably less bad. Experiment with different 
weights until you find the best you can do, and install a 
similar weight permanently to the back side of the soundboard 
at the bridge end. If the bridge end is on a cantilever 
(didn't look like it in the photo), and not attached to the 
soundboard, you'll want to try wedging between the two to see 
what it does to the sound. In other words, try to diagnose the 
problem before fixing anything so you won't fix what ain't 
broke, and not fix what is.
Ron N