Bass strings changing scale

[John Delacour]

At 1:20 AM -0600 12/1/01, Richard Moody wrote:

>I have wondered since hearing some of the practices of the bass string
>makers, don't they "change the scale" by the methods they use?   What is
>the "scale stick" I have heard that is used by M and others?

That would be a wooden lath marked with the copper endings for the 
scale in question.  In some shops working the traditional way a line 
on the flattening bottle will be lined up with the mark on the stick 
and then brought forward to flatten the wire between the dies.  I no 
longer use this method but it is very exact and makes it easy to pick 
up errors.

>You send a
>paper impression and the first and last string of each division.   Do you
>still get the same "scale" back?

The old-style stringmaker will simply reproduce roughly what was 
originally there without doing any calculations.  The wire sizes will 
be arbitrarily spread out between the end strings you have supplied 
for each section.  The better stringmakers of this class will have 
been told through the oral tradition that a certain progression is 
better than a straight progression, but there is no way to get that 
progression ideal without calculation.  A stringmaker with lots of 
practical and theoretical experience can look at the curve of the 
bridge, make a few calculations and do the rest in his head.  I do 
this from time to time just to sharpen me up, just as I test myself 
measuring wire thickness by eye without a micrometer, but I'd always 
work from precise calculations printed out from an Excel spreadsheet.

Many original scales are not thought out at all and were arrived at 
empirically, often with very bad results.  The reason I make strings 
is that 15 years ago there was no stringmaker in England who could 
calculate a scale and they just copied what was there, adding errors 
into the bargain.  What finally pushed me over the edge was a 
replacement set for a Schiedmayer grand.  The five top singles broke, 
and it was clear form the condition of the plate and the plank that 
these strings had been breaking regularly for many years and being 
replaced with close copies.  I ordered a second replacement set and 
the same thing happened.  I got out my old Wolfenden and learned how 
to calculate bass strings (I don't recommend Wolfenden for this, but 
it was a start).  I then bought the first Mac 128K and Multiplan (now 
Excel) and programmed a spreadsheet to automate the scalings.  After 
a while having other makers work to my calculations, I stole a 
foreman from another maker, built my own machine and began to make 
strings properly.  The machine was also designed on that 128K Mac 
with a pre-release version of MacDraw that took up a whole 90K on a 
single-sides floppy disk.

>I have heard that makers in the end cut and try bass strings.  What ever
>sounds the best they use.  (And then apply it to the rest of the models I
>presume)

I'm sure that many makers of cheap uprights worked that way, relying 
on a stringmaker to get in the ballpark and then adjusting the 
results mainly to reduce cost.  The results are to be seen all over 
the place.  Quite a few of the great makers, however, put a lot of 
thought and slide-rule work into their scales, which show that they 
were aiming for a certain tone quality by the application of proper 
theory according to their lights.

>Does this account for reported "gross" jumps in tension
>throughout the bass scale.  So if the string maker uses a "scale stick" do
>these "gross" differences come back the same or altered?

There will always be one large step in the tension curve where 
singles pass to bichords.  Wolfenden recommended what I regard as too 
small a jump,  Ron Nossaman et al talk of what I regard as an 
unnecessarily large jump, but it will depend on a number of factors. 
My practice might average out at a  280 -> 190lbf drop in tension 
from note 13 single to note 14 bichord, but it will depend.  The 
curve of the two sections will be regular without jumps.

>I would think bass strings would have a diff characteristic when wound
>"loose" than wound "tight". Is this true and does such a practice exist?
>(tight vs "loose" windings)   Or is there a "universal" tightness that
>everybody seeks when winding bass strings.?

No, but there should be, and any stringmaker who does not have a 
standard and develop the skill or the mechanisms to adhere to it 
should not be making strings.  I won't go into details because you 
can read previous and recent postings of mine to the list concerning 
stringmaking.  I have come across English old-style stringmakers who 
considered it a worthy skill to be able to get the diameter of a 
replacement odd string spot on by varying the tension of the winding. 
If they had applied the same skill to applying the proper tension to 
every cover and achieving the correct diameter according to the 
standard, their strings might have sounded a bit better.

JD