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Old 02-24-2007, 02:44 PM
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David Powell David Powell is offline
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Brian, when I first got my bass, the shop set-up was with the afterlengths tuned to the major 3rd (plus at least one octave, perhaps two). I was surprised to find that this kind of detail had been paid attention to in design and placement of the TP. The tuning was too dead on for it to be accidental. So at least the maker thought it contributed something. I changed the string spacing and the only 3rd tuning that is surviving is the middle string, the A. The rest are close but of course the G and low B suffered the most. It really didn't seem to affect the way the bass played or sounded nearly as much as the new bridge, or even as much as when I did a very minor dressing on the FB. With a tunable Pecanic;- that is one with separate adjustable saddles on the TP for each string, I could have restored the tuning. I don't think it is that important what these are tuned to as long as it is tuned to something. It could help with getting intonation correct in the high range and might give a little constructive resonance to some notes here and there. I'd love to get one of them and play with it to find out. As far as wolf tones go, it seems plausible that if putting a weight on an afterlength reduces a wolf tone, then tuning the afterlength to something might also help, but I don't know that anyone has done the careful research that would be required to establish that. Like anything else in a system as complex as a DB, it might work sometimes, and it might do nothing.

As far as the compensated TP goes, the extra room for afterlength on the heavier strings probably makes those feel more balanced in terms of flexibility.
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