Now, I'm really confused! Did you rescale it to tensions relevant to 425cps? Or, just arbitrarily change the tension scheme? And,..are you going to tune it to 440cps? If not, then why change the scale. All...most confusing Jim! Nah, just poor communication on my part. It takes me time to write coherently. Plus I'm working with some design assumptions that might be considered a flavor other than vanilla. Lets try again. It will be tuned to 425. Set scaling program to 425. If the wire sizes and core/wrap configurations remain unchanged, the 425 will automatically reduce tensions a bit, but not a heck of a lot, just a couple of %. Based on some earlier tension dropping experiments I've been messing with in the bass, I wanted to go further than this...simplified bass tonal spectrum. Add to that reasoning the structural reasons for wanting more than a couple % reduction in tension. However, though there were structural concerns, the bass tensions clearly do have a tonal goal, and are defined in concert with elevated but safe BP% curves. Bass inharmonicity ends up somewhat reduced, but treble inharmonicity ends up being increased a bit as well. In this case, that means the treble ends up being pretty close to the original scale values (which were high). Thinking about your comment, and going back over the spreadsheet, I could have achieved the above simplified bass and tenor tonal goals at 440 (the back and forth on this list always teaches me something). I would have had to reduce plain wire cores a bit more in the treble to compensate, and that would have reduced inharmonicity up there a bit...probably would have been a good strategy. But the bass strings have been designed at the 425, so for this one, I think I'll keep things there. What I'm interested in seeing is, though the lower tensions create higher treble inharmonicity values relative to higher tension modern scales, what audible effect this higher inharmonicity has. Will it have any audible effect at all, in the the big picture? Power will be reduced, but what other effects will or will not be audible? -- Jim Ialeggio jim at grandpianosolutions.com (978) 425-9026 Shirley, MA
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