Sound post too long slight elevation plate

[chanot]

Been  away for few years doing jewellry and large sculpture. Missed my violin making and restoring and contact with friends at Maestronet. Came across a Francois Salzard violin made mid 19th century. Has been roughly treated, with edge of front plate excoriated both at middle bouts and upper bouts.. and 2 corners of front plate missing. Sound post fell when strings removed and violin jarred...  post showed excellent crafting but at some time in the past or.. maybe the current one..must have been too long,  as the inner border of f hole is about 0.8 mm above outer border near middle ..Upper wing is only about .33 mm raised. I wonder how much tone is disturbed by this apparent minimal displacement?

I believe I read advice not to insert a slightly shorter post with string tension at partial to "retrain the slightly elevated front plate to gradually settle to unelevated state and eventually accept the proper length of sound post...Likely the post would fall  in this case during the treatment if strings removed and would appear too short when placed without string tension .... Likely not enough distortion to remove top...No  sound post crack... ...Would some application of moisture to corpus from internal moisturizer help if this procedure was attempted?.. ..Probably should follow advice I just read from of one of the experts and fit post lightly snug with no string tension at  the current elevation of front plate and leave well enough alone.

I  wonder how much tone suffers in a fiddle apparently played for years with this minimal elevation of front plate from too long post?    Depends how it sounds after I string it up now and make new bridge (missing) whether I go on to restore the edges of spruce top.Advice is appreciated.

Chanot/Dale Palko MD

 

 

 

 

 

[PASEWICZ]

What you are describing sounds like a post that is too short not too long.  Both the post falling when string tension was released, and the elevated f would be caused by a post that was too short and moved outside the edge of the bridge foot to stay up.