dueling strings

[Ron Nossaman]

Tuning a grand yesterday, I got to watching the bass bichords as I pulled
the unisons in. Out of tune by a beat or so, with each hammer impact the
visible reaction of the strings was quite different. One string would leap
up quite a ways on one blow, while the other would go higher on the next,
and they would react similarly on the third. The closer to clean the unison
got, the less the visible difference in the string reactions until they
were visually identical blow after blow as the unison tuning became
acceptable. Yea, I know why, but it is still interesting to watch the
effect of the phase difference on the string excursion at hammer impact.

Hardly a visual tuning aid, but I thought it was kind of cool to play with.

Ron N