Pinning and Tone

[James Ellis]

My earlier post on this subject was not intended to invite insults, and Ed
Foote's caustic remark about Oak Ridge Tennessee is not appreciated.  We
who live here do not "glow in the dark".  If this were a "poisoned area",
as Ed suggests, then why would those of us who have worked here for years
and know it best choose to retire here?  Yes, we have our problems, but so
do many other places, some much worse than Oak Ridge.  This forum is not
the place for insults, so please refrain from them.

Harace Greeley, Ed Sutton, Conrad Hoffsommer, Michael Jorgensen, and
Charles Ball all made astute remarks describing the problems in trying to
make measurements of this pinning-and-tonal effect.  It's almost impossible
to do it, and not introduce some other variable at the same time.

Yes, Ed, (Sutton) I have seen the Stamwood flange, and a piano in which it
was installed.  What some of you might not have seen is an 1877 Chickering
that had adjustable tighteners on the flanges - tiny leaf springs attached
to the split flanges to maintain constant tightness as the wood and felt
swelled and shrunk with changes in relative humidity.  If you will look
inside the cover of some immediate past JOURNALS, you will see Larry
Crabb's picture with that vary piano - one of the first overstrung
Chickerings to be made following the expiration of Steinway's patent.

The purpose of my post was simply to say that it would be interesting to
get some quantitative measurements of this effect so we would no longer
have to speculate.  Marcel, you said you remember a demonstration by Chris
Robinson using a 3-D spectrun analyzer.  Perhaps he would be willing to
publish something in the JOURNAL.

Sincerely, Jim Ellis