Bass string scaling question

[Ron Nossaman]

> Ideally, all of them.  But it's difficult if not impossible on existing
> bridges and you have to make compromises.  That's the nature of my question.
> When forced to compromise, what do people prefer.  I tend to emphasize
> tension.  The Z effect is not always consistent and (soundboard and end of
> bridge effects aside) I'm not sure why.  

Because soundboard and end of bridge effects are not aside. 
That's why. They are real factors that need to be considered. 
We may not be able to entirely adjust for these things in 
string scaling, but we do need to be aware that to a real 
degree, they exist, and we cannot. This makes beating our 
heads against the wall recreational, rather than a despair 
reaction, since we already knew the limitations of the process 
going in. Just like we can't fix all tone production problems 
with hammer voicing (which we know by trial), and we can't fix 
all soundboard assembly impedance and geometry problems with 
scaling (which we discover at some expense), or all rim and 
belly rigidity problems with a new rib scale (which we learn 
at much greater expense, and some bloodshed).


>As Ron mentioned, when you can lay
> it out from scratch, you can achieve a smooth curve with all three.  


Yes, and come to savor the difference between mistakes made by 
yourself, and those made my someone else. The greatest of 
which is that you have the chance of discovering and 
minimizing those made by yourself before they are rendered in 
hardware. This is a blessing hard to describe to those that 
don't build from scratch, but immediately understood by those 
that do.
  Ron N