On Dec 4, 2009, at 12:35 PM, Ron Nossaman wrote: >> All pianos and harpsichords have foreshortened scales. It >> doesn't take a spreadsheet to see that if you strung a piano with >> 13 wire throughout, the tension would decrease as you went down the >> scale, and the percent of breaking point would also decrease. And >> that the same thing would be true if you started at the point where >> any other gauge began and strung the lower portion of the piano >> with that gauge. >> Or is there some fallacy I am missing in this reasoning? > > You mean other than the fact that changing gage size on any given > speaking length at a given pitch will change the calculated tension, > but not the break%. I don't really care, nor do I see any > connection. That single note in question doesn't care either, what > the guys an octave away are doing, or how any of the rest of the > scale is constructed. The difference in our thinking is that I am basing mine on an existing scale, not some theoretical any length/any pitch. I am assuming a scale that either works or comes close. That's what I deal with in the real world, so the principles that apply work just fine. I am not stating some theoretical thing to apply to any length or any pitch. Obviously there are a lot of impossibilities out there. Thanks so much for the formulae, but what I asked for was a spreadsheet with a real life piano scale included. If you have one and are willing to share it, I'd be happy to see it, and to enter some gauges to see whether or not what I have asserted is true. If not, we are just arguing at cross purposes and might as well not bother. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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