Impedance Matching

[Ron Nossaman]

>The topic of this thread has rankled everytime I saw it come up. Finally 
>someone has spotted the error.
>
>The art in this design issue is how to achieve a desirable impedance
>*mis-match* between soundboard and bridge.  This is far from impedance
>matching, since that situation would have zero sustain, all energy being
>rapidly passed from bridge to soundboard. 
>
>Stephen


It's not that this isn't known, and has just now been "spotted". It's been
stated before on the list. The talk of matching soundboard impedance to the
string impedance in different areas of the scale refers to the ideal ranges
that will give the designer the sound he wants, not an exact match of the
numbers. In the context that a "Match" is an ideal balance, there's no
problem other than a misunderstanding of nomenclature. I assumed that had
been straightened out a long time ago, but I was apparently mistaken. The
major points of these talks about impedance matching, to my mind, is the
understanding that there is an ideal match/mismatch between string and
soundboard impedances, and impedance requirements of the SB assembly ARE
different from bass to treble. That being the case, every single dimension
of every single component of the soundboard/rib/bridge/string system should
be the result of a design decision. 

 Ron N