[CAUT] harpsichord false beat - twist string

[Fred Sturm]

Hi all,
	A while back, when we were discussing Jim Ellis' first article about  
false beats, I speculated that maybe some harpsichord false beats  
could be cured by twisting the string. Today I had the opportunity to  
experiment, and, to my amazement, it worked. I had five horribly false  
beating strings in the mid range of a four foot choir, French double  
instrument. I was able to "cure" (markedly improve) four of them by  
adding a 360 degree twist (I wanted to twist so that the final bit of  
wire sticking out at the end of the tail was pointing the same,  
continuing to perform the function of keeping the tail from unwinding  
and looking consistent. Otherwise I would have done 180). On one  
string, I had to redo the process, as the first time I must have  
introduced too much twist - the falseness changed, but was still very  
noticeably bad. The fifth got away from me, and coiled up into such a  
mess I had to replace it. Obviously these strings were from those old  
Hubbard spools of wire of 20 - 30 years ago, about 1 inch in diameter,  
as the one that got away from me coiled into VERY small coils. Talk  
about residual coil!
	Anyway, it seems that Jim's explanation of that one particular cause  
of false beating applies to harpsichords, and that it can potentially  
be cured or improved with the same wire by introducing a twist. It's  
troublesome to do, especially for 4 foot (where they are most common):  
lower tension, holding the wire at all times to retain tension on the  
coils on the tuning pin. Remove tail from hitch pin, give it a turn,  
replace, get the string aligned to bridge and nut pins, bring back to  
pitch. The hard part is retaining that tension on the coils at all  
times, while performing the other tasks. I should mention this was  
modern wire. The low carbon historic wire is much easier to deal with  
in this regard.
	This was on a harpsichord I strung many years ago. I remember quite  
well that I was very careful to "keep the residual coiling lined up  
with itself." IOW, I took pains not to introduce twist into the wire.  
I speculate that that made it more likely that I would produce the  
scenario Jim described, where the residual twist is offset somewhat  
from vertical or horizontal. These false beats were HORRIBLE. I have  
been amazed at how bad they could be. The bridge and nut pins were  
nice and tight, everything exactly the same as neighboring notes that  
didn't have falseness. I remember trying replacing a string in hopes  
of curing the problem, taking extra special care not to introduce  
twist. And ending up with just as bad a falseness.
	Anyhow, FWIW. Might come in handy for someone some day.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu