On a Scale of One

[Delwin D Fandrich]

I was not aware that any US manufacturers did this.  Or is this one of the
new Cable Nelson pianos that could have been built anywhere in the known or
unknown universe.

Knight (of England) also did this.  A highly touted feature.

I'm not sure that it did any good.  For one thing, I don't think we really
want a truly 'equal tension' scale.  And, of course, you are correct in that
it does upset that nice inharmonicity curve.  But then, inharmonicity is
also over rated as a scaling tool.

One question.  Do you know if they carried the equal tension scheme through
to the bass section as well?  The true equal tension scales worked with
individual string tensions, not unison tensions.  Through the bass as well.

Del

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----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Nossaman <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: March 01, 2000 2:52 PM
Subject: On a Scale of One


> Tuning a Cable Nelson (Lyon & Healy) yesterday, I noticed something
> interesting about the tenor/treble bridge. Periodically, the speaking
> length progressions would change at every four or six unisons, so that at
> the change, the note above was nearly as long as the one below. This is
the
> first one of these I have noticed out there in the world, but I recognized
> the pattern because I had played with it on my scaling spreadsheet a
couple
> of years ago. It was a genuine equal tension scale, at least through the
> treble. The idea is that you sweep a "regular" log scale, determine wire
> size breaks, and adjust individual unison speaking lengths up or down from
> the center of each wire size section, to make the tension changes between
> wire sizes as smooth as possible. Of course, it screws up the
corresponding
> inharmonicity curve, but what the heck.
>
> I've heard a lot of talk about equal tension scaling through the years,
but
> this is the first production example where I've seen it done through the
> treble. In the bass, it's not necessary to change speaking lengths, and
> some truly strange scales are possible without looking like anything
unusual.
>
> Now for the big question. Why would anyone particularly care if string
> tensions were the same through any particular section when it's done at
the
> expense of the inharmonicity curve? Yea, OK, they probably didn't have the
> inharmonicity information we have today and were playing the cards they
> had, but it still seems like a strange approach.
>
> Ron N