Do you fellow jackrailers believe in ghosting? Do we know of any sources
suggesting such a method?
For those of you who do ghost, how thick is your ghosting shim? I have
one here that was kindly given to me by Owen Daly years ago and it is
0.41 mm. Which means that in the bass the plectra don’t protrude at all
from the string. Of course, a thin shim such as this can only give good
results if the jacks fit perfectly in their slots.
I’d be interested in hearing what others do.
Thanks.
I use the ghosting method and I think it’s a good idea for movable registers. Maybe it wouldn’t make such a difference for a fixed register such as an upper manual, but I use it there anyway. I don’t use a shim, I must admit… I install a sample plectrum into one jack and cut it to 5 mm in length, then I move that jack among various slots over the entire compass to see if there are problems with the relationship of the strings to the register slots. Based on this experiment, I set a ghosting position that allows the majority of strings to ghost with this 5 mm sample plectrum and I work from there for all the remaining jacks. In the bass, I allow the plectrum to ghost strongly or even just barely pluck the string, but elsewhere I aim for it to just brush the strings with a tiny bit of noise.
Once ghosting is complete I turn the register on and hopefully find that the plectrum projection is even and has taken the thicker bass strings into account.
This approach is quite subjective and less scientific than using the ghosting shim, which I admit I should try out someday.
Thanks, Borys.