A manufacturer is producing a 5 string bass with an extended peg head design which means that the end of a low B string is wrapped around a tuner towards the top of the peg head as opposed to the lower part of the peg head resulting is more string length above the nut. The manufacturer is claiming that this design increases the tension of the string. How can that be when the vibrating length i.e. the distance between the nut and the bridge does not change and the amount of tension to make the open string sound a B doesn’t change?
I suspect they are talking about the mechanical stresses that are trying to pull the head forward. The forces on the head are at an angle, due to the fact that the strings don’t go straight from the pegs back to the bridge, but instead go across the fretboard first. The tension on the bridge is the same in either case, but the tension pulling the head forward (if you are playing the bass, literally straight forward ahead of you) and trying to snap it off will vary depending on how much the string bends after leaving the fretboard and goes to the pegs.
It’s hard to explain without a picture, so let me try some horrible ASCII art:
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| head —> being pulled this way as well as down
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|| neck
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body --> this way is front (i.e. strings on this side)
On preview this came out ok.
Rule #1: Musicians do not have to know anything about physics.
Remember rule #1 while figuring this one out.
The extra length won’t affect the string tension. It may make the string a little easier to finger though, since the slight increase in tension will probably be averaged across the entire length of a longer string.