String termination question

[Richard Brekne]

Anyone who wants to can easily prove to themselves that the below simply 
doesn' t hold true. There are a variety of ways to go about punching 
gargantuan holes in this reasoning. One easy way is to take a simple 
center pin.... nice fat one say a size 24 and insert it under a unison 
on the bridge say 2-3 mm behind the front bridge pin. This gives you as 
floppy a bridge pin situation as could ever occur in real life and then 
some.  Bring the unison up to tension and see how often you end up with 
a false beating string that was clean before.  For that matter... pay 
attention to how often a string that started off being false gets clean 
by this experiement.  Do this for say 10 different unisions to start 
getting an idea of the percentages involved here.  It ends up that 
around 55 - 60 % of the time a <<loose pin>> and a false beat are 
coincident events.  Hardly grounds for a cause and effect relationship 
declaration.

But even if one stops up for a second and accepts for the moment this 
wobbly pin idea.  It is then more likely that the pin is going to wobble 
in a for and aft orientation then sideways to begin with. For two 
reasons. One, the string is under considerable side bearing stress to 
begin with where as for and aft there is virtually no stress. Two.. the 
largest and most violent  amplitude of vibrational motion by far is the 
pushing/pull of recursive pulses smashing into the bridge and their 
correspondant up and down motions.

Beyond this and going back to a more involved perspective of the 
termination, the claim that the string makes no upwards and downwards 
motion beyond the bridge pin is an unsupported one. In fact, in the not 
so distant past there was a post describing a class given at a regional 
where high speed photography actually pictured this. Given a recessed 
notch which essentially provides no vertical support under the string at 
the proximity of the bridge pin... and the directional orientation of 
the string pulse... this isn't really all that difficult to imagine.

The standard bridge / bridge pin configuration that defines the strings 
termination is a compound support.

Cheers
RicB


    One more time. There is no need for careful alignment other
    than keeping the notch edge out of the speaking length. The
    pin is the termination. The PIN is the termination. THE PIN IS
    THE TERMINATION. That is in both the vertical and horizontal
    excursion, just as the capo is the termination in both the
    vertical and horizontal excursion. If the pin is tight in the
    cap at the cap surface, where it won't flagpole, there won't
    be the classic false beat even with the notch clear behind the
    pin. The beat is NOT caused by the string sliding up and down
    the pin.
    Ron N