Horses for Courses.

The rounded-top bridge principle has not been the case for the grand piano, violin or sitar. Point-support bridge design has traditionally been used in the piano for centuries and is renowned for being difficult to record successfully. Some modern makers have experimented with rounded-top bridge design with encouraging results. The string tension has to be great in order to produce loudness.

The violin similarly uses high tension strings but the wound lower courses have very flexible cores which bend over the knife-edged bridge easily. Soft, damping sleeves are used to kill the nastiness induced by the knife edge. A compromise.

The sitar needs to use relatively low-tension strings for its characteristic 'buzz' tone, the bridge top being a flat plate, against which spiky harmonics are generated in a kind of rattle, unsuited to other instruments' repertoires.

In the 'clockwork laser' we are talking about a peculiar formula for a lightweight, stiff and relatively fat, wound string, designed to work in low tension.