[CAUT] Harpsichord popping strings

[Laurence Libin]

With Willard Martin's harpsichords you can rule out bad scaling. 
Laurence

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Sturm 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 2:19 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] Harpsichord popping strings


  On Oct 11, 2010, at 11:51 AM, Laurence Libin wrote:


    Forgive me for bringing this up, but is the harpsichord tuned at the designed pitch?
    Laurence 


  I think that is a good place to start. A lot of instruments are designed and constructed for low pitch (usually 415). Sometimes they have transposing keyboards, sometimes not. A reasonably well-designed harpsichord _might_ be able to withstand being 100 cents sharp, but that is certainly not always the case. 
  There is the question of where they are breaking, If it is consistently at the pin, and if they are strung so that the coil on the pin crosses over a length of wire (especially with becketless pins, but some makers do this with beckets as well - for additional security against the coil coming loose), that can produce a kink in the wire which can cause breakage. This is especially if the under wire is at the point where the coil wire is just leaving the pin. 
  Beyond that, it is a question of scale. If it was scaled badly, there isn't much to be done, other than replace low tension wire with modern high tension, with the difference in sound that will create.

  Regards,
  Fred Sturm
  fssturm at unm.edu
  http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm
  http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm
  http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/FredSturm







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20101011/5b2235f7/attachment.htm>