Overall inharmonicity, was RE: Call for scaling spreadsheets

[Ric Brekne]

Hi Calin

This appears to me to fairly well jive with Fandrichs comments. Tho it 
is possible to read those comments otherwise as well I suppose.  High 
tension scales are cited as having punchier, harder sound that carries 
well with very good sustain characteristics. Lots of power but harshness 
and "strident sound" easily occur when hammers become too hard/dense.

That matches really well with my personal experience with Bechsteins of 
the past.  Nice pianos but tempermental voicing wize.  I get the 
impression that the window of optimum voicing is quite small.  Takes 
nothing to get them to sound too brash... but its dangerous to voice 
down as it takes equally nearly nothing to get a mushy sound out of 
them.  But when they voiced well... boy do they have a nice sound IMHO

Cheers
RicB


    Stephane writes about overall inharmonicity and its influence on the
    piano'sprojection. I have read Fenner's book on piano design, and
    there he divides
    pianos in 3 groups according to overall inharmonicity. He cites
    severalexamples among them: Boesendorfer   low inh., Steinway  
    middle, and Bechstein (the only one)   high inh. Interesting to note
    that he says that high inharmonicity scales sound better than the
    others at low to medium levels of volume, but when played very loud
    they start distorting, which he says is typical for Bechstein (I
    guess he refers to the older models, since Fenner died a while ago
    and Bechstein just brought out new grand models in the last couple
    of years). Sclaes with lower inh. Sound les interesting at moderate
    levels but don't distort loud playing. He explained the perceived
    beauty of tone of scales with high inh. through a peculiarity of the
    inner ear, but I don't remember all of it.

    Calin Tantareanu