[pianotech] Steinway A Bass String Rescaling

[Ron Nossaman]

William Truitt wrote:
> I don't think that an "acceptable" range of inharmonicity can ever be
> determined objectively, nor is that necessary or even desirable.  That's a
> bit like asking "What's the best color red?"  You are asking people for a
> judgment (perhaps based on certain criteria, but also shaped by
> preferences).  Why would an absolute standard be a good thing?  I think it
> is great that we have many different pianos based on different inharmonicity
> curves as well as other criteria.  That being said, many of us would agree
> that certain pianos sound better than others, and this can be correlated to
> the amount of inharmonicity and the smoothness of the curve (amongst a
> multitude of other things that we cannot separate from inharmonicity, as Ron
> points out in his curmudgeonly fashion :-) ).  

My point was, and is, that we don't hear the inharmonicity in 
the pianos. We hear tension, Z, and partials mix our choice of 
core wire, tension, and break% gives. Inharmonicity comes in 
when you're trying to tune across a transition with a big 
mismatch.


>We do understand a hell of a
> lot more about inharmonicity and the other factors involved in string
> scaling than we did 50 years ago, and that is being put to use in scaling
> and rescaling pianos today.  Do we know everything there is to know?  Not
> likely.  
> 
> Will

Yes, we do know a lot more, except that too much emphasis is 
still being put on absolute inharmonicity values in scaling.
Ron N