Wapin revisited : JD

[Ric Brekne]

JD writes

     >  RicB writes

     >  After all the soundboard moves more readily up and down and would
     > quickly absorb most strictly vertical motion... as the reasoning
     > goes.


Whose reasoning?
JD
----------------------------

Hi JD.

Ah... well this comes straight out of the five lectures you see... and 
was recently used as a refutation of Stuarts claim that increasing the 
length of time that a string vibrates in a vertical orientation will 
increase sustain.  The argument was that if the string vertical 
vibration time was increased.. then the soundboard would just eat up 
this energy (and PDQ as well) and so sustain would actually be 
shortened.  These same argued that the increased sustain evident in the 
Stuart was more likely a matter of the increased mass contributed by the 
substantial amount of brass from the agraffes.  In itself an 
understandable reason assuming you buy all the assumptions made by the 
relevant authors in the 5 lectures. 

Again tho... one does not actually know whether or not the Stuart 
actually displays a longer duration of the vertical vibration mode as 
part the funtioning system the instrument is... because no one has 
actually measured this carefully enough to be conclusive. There have 
been some casual observations made by skeptics... but thats hardly 
objective to begin with and in anycase the observations have not been 
sophisticated enough to confirm one way or the other.  Looks like 
another job for Stephen !

IF !!,,, however... it can be shown via high speed photography or some 
other applicable device that the Stuart piano actually DOES display a 
lengthened period for the vertical vibrational direction of a string.... 
then it will be interesting to hear how this can be in the face of the 
above reasoning :)  

Cheers
RicB