Hi Alan. I dont really see that an experiment is necessary per se. Anything that comes in contact with the string only part of the time will cause a buzz... and suck up whatever energy goes into making the buzz. Conceptually... its the same thing as putting a penny on a unison and putting the string into vibration. Its just that instead of a free floating penny... its the edge of the capo / part of a groove / or in general poor contact. The same thing would happen at the bridge if we didnt use bridge pins to hold the strings clamped.. yes ? But if you must have some kind of experiment to demonstrate leakage across the termination, simply build yourself a monochord with the ability to alter the length and angle of the front duplex length. Then pluck the front length with some standardized force and measure the output of the speaking length. You will find the angle and length are not nearly so related to this output as you might think. On the other hand... there is indeed a clear and significant relationship between these same angle and length quantities as it relates to loss TO the termination (as in buzzing). And another clear relationship between these two along with the profile and hardness of the capo as it relates to long term wear... which can lead to buzzing over time... or string breakage... or other issues. There is a lot to balance and the fact that there has been tried so many configurations attests to that. Think of it this way Alan. You have two things here. Buzzing at the capo itself and a vibrating front segment. Are they the same thing ? Of course not. I think the idea that they can be thrown into the same box came about because a group of techs not liking the front duplex sound as a whole decided to just define all sound coming from this system as noise. This is clearly a misnomer because the definition of noise is along the lines of "random frequencies" where as the front segment is far too clearly defined. And no... it does not matter that the actual frequencies deviate from the intended ones to some degree... there is a clear pattern and element of design to the front segment lengths. That simply precludes the idea of randomness. Just as a kicker... I was on an old B today. Just for fun I used a small pick to pluck at several front lengths to see what kind of output I'd get for the speaking lengths. Two agraffe's and two capos. You couldnt hear a difference in output at all. Perhaps one is measurable... but the difference wont be much. Angles up on the agraffes were about 15 degrees and the capo a bit steeper. Front lengths were standard at the capo for S&S and about 10 mm for the agraffes. Hope this helps. Cheers RicB OK. I hear you. So you must have devised some kind of experiment to prove this to yourself - that the buzzing that we hear is not excessive leakage across the capo, but is leakage to the capo instead. I'd like to be able to do that experiment myself. Can you describe your experiment so that I might be able to duplicate it? Alan
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