Cy Shuster, Ron Nossaman, and others, Thanks for this reference, and for your point about learning from theory and by well-presented analogies. It happens that for various reasons I haven't recently been able to get into journal literature that hasn't been anthologized, and haven't yet got hold of Del Fandrich's articles. But Ron does have a point in a case like mine. If I read theory that is new to me and quite fascinating, such as that of pulses travelling within the speaking length and being (partially) reflected from different kinds of termination, it still is true that I lack the mastery of trigonometry, calculus, and whatever else that would help me to understand, in a range of cases and reported or observed values, what results of calculation might reasonably be expected to be significant in design, and what results might reasonably not. And, at the moment, I'm not set up to make my own listening experiments. So, for example, if I were to have to make choices reasonably soon, a good deal of them would be based on "faith" or "authority" or "trust". (Nothing new or always bad about that, of course.) A very small case in point: from what I've seen of a recent sales brochure from Bl"uthner, the company appears to be saying that they use rib crowning, and make their soundboard assemblies starting from 5% to 6% moisture content. They refer to their approach to crowning as not aiming so much at spherical crown as at crown along the line of the long bridge (which might be another way of saying that they use rib crowning). They also point out that they bevel the rims to fit the assembly's perimeter bearing surface. In this case, since (if I recall correctly) Ron has questioned the value of rim beveling, at least under certain conditions, I wonder whether the maker is simply following its own (or even others') traditions, or has done its own research to try to determine whether or not it makes a difference. (There is, however, plenty about the experience of playing this maker's new instruments that engenders a great deal of "faith" or "trust".) I've known from reading the list that length of backscale is considered important. The response has made me think more about why there are rebuilders who (if I recall correctly) find it worthwhile to to replace standard hitch pins with vertical hitch pins. Thanks, Randy Jacob University of Michigan Library --On Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:27 PM -0500 Cy Shuster <charter1400@charter.net> wrote: > Ron, > > Different people learn best via different mechanisms. You have the luxury > of having learned through lots of hands-on experience. For those of us > who have never touched a SB outside of a piano, theory is helpful, along > with analogies; that's what I found interesting. In particular, I > thought the article contributed a lot of acoustic theory, born out by > measurement, that directly applies to the sound transmission mechanisms > through the bridge that the list was trying to wrestle to the ground last > year (such as how can there be motion in a node). And I thought it was > interesting (but maybe not useful) that inharmonicity is caused by higher > frequencies propagating faster through the string (and to see the > oscilloscope trace). > > --Cy Shuster-- > Rochester, MN
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC