String coupling

[Ron Nossaman]

>I think what Ron is saying, and my intuition agrees, instead of down
>bearing of 2-6lbs per string, we need to reverse our thinking, and think of
>the bridge termination as being non fixed. I think this why we can measure
>and hear the differences of 1+2+3 strings of a unison.

Huh? Instead of down bearing???? You lost me there. The bridge termination
has always been non fixed (and the agraffe and vee bar too for that
matter), and if I'm suspecting that soundboard assembly impedance has
something to do with a phenomenon, that sort of assumes that the bridge is
moving along with the soundboard doesn't it? Which reversal of thinking is
that, exactly? Of course the bridge is moving, and that naturally means
that there is energy transference from the string to the bridge and
soundboard, and feedback to the string. Impedance is what determines the
energy transfer rates, as, I suppose, resonant frequency would modify the
efficiency of the transfer as well. Whatever, it's far too early to
speculate on that just yet. Since this is getting a lot more traffic than I
really anticipated, let's outline a few points in need of clarification, so
we won't be seeing a lot of numbers out of context with any sort of
systematic approach.

Here are the reported phenomena, and what I feel is minimal information on
each.

1:Which unison in the scale is being tested? Plain, or wrapped? There might
be more interesting things awaiting us in wrapped strings too. Relationship
to scale breaks. or other special circumstances. Is the test unison at or
near the low tenor break?


2:Pitch CLIMB (that's really more accurate) above "tuned" pitch in first
half second or so of the attack. I think we should have the peak pitch, as
closely as can be determined, and the DURATION, or relative duration of
this elevated pitch between single string, two string, and three string unison.

3: Dwell pitch, after the attack pitch settles down to the "tuned" pitch.
Once in the dwell, what happens to the single string unison pitch when the
second string, and the third are tuned in? 


At this point, I'm not sure the individual partials information would mean
a thing, nor the voicing, regulation, pinning, who's on first, or anything
at all except the overall pitch of the unison @ 1, 2, 3 strings, and the
duration and peak value of the attack pitch rise @ 1,2,3 strings. With this
information, we can see if a drastic shortening of duration of attack pitch
with added strings correlates to greater pitch drop in the dwell phase at
the same time. Or not. In any case, this seems to me to be a minimum amount
of information for each unison test for any of this to mean anything at
all. It may not ultimately connect into anything real anyway, but even
then, it might indicate the direction for the next line of inquiry. 

The information we've got so far doesn't really connect to anything. It's
like a questionnaire filled out: 
Name: Joe
Place of birth: hospital bed
Place of residence: home
Next of Kin: Dad

The information may be dead accurate, but it's not yet in any sort of
context, so we can't have a clue what any of it means until it is. 

Ron N