Del, Our symbiotic adovocational/critical dialogue regarding the duplex scale energy seems to be focusing in at the bridge. Your view of the bridge board assembly being responsible for the energy transfer rather than the vibrations of the string itself could be alot closer to the truth than many of the views extant. The original Steinway patent has some phrases in it that I still can not reconcile with the English version, especially the langsschwingungen and the langeschwingungen disparity. I still don't get it. Your idea may be closer to the understanding of the duplex scale phenomena than any others, including mine. On the other hand, you seem to be wililng to acknowledge that energy is transferred and the pitch of the duplex scale does have an effect on the tone of the speaking length. To that point I would like to mention a slightly different viewpoint that may be worth your consideration. And that is the specific response of the duplex portion of the string to the activation of the speaking length. When I first started my research and experiments i believed that there was an actual sound of the duplex scale that was supposed to coincide with the speaking length. And when it did, the tone was better, and when it didn't the tone was worse in terms of sustain and purity. However in the past few years I have abandoned this viewpoint. I believe that Bluthner tried his 4th string duplex design with this theory in mind. At the moment, my best view is that the bridge pins do indeed stop a great deal of the energy between SL and DL but not all of it. Since the bridge pin is not a hitch pin, it can't So what goes across the bridge? And then , what comes back? Isn't the string alive even though a great portion of its energy is curtailed? So my view is not that there is a resonant response of the duplex scale portion of the strin producing an actual tone that blends or detracts from the speaking length, but rather that the course of energy going from SL to Duplex , around the hitch pin and back into the speaking length directly does affect the vibrational consistency of the speaking length. It really may be time to set up an experiment that gets to the heart of the matter. I am not equipped to do it at the moment. Rick Baldassin and Randy Potter have offered to be integral partners in such an endeavor, but our distances from one another make this impractical for now. If any one were to consider this project I would like to suggest a specific strategy that I would use if I had the means. VIZ Using a Reyburn Cybertuner, I would take a subject specimen piano with a perfectly tuned duplex scale and take all kinds of reading from it. Then I would mute the duplex scale entirely and take a second set of readings. Thirdly I would de-tune the duplex to "dissonant" (non low partial tones, such as sevenths, flat ninths,) and take another set of readings. Fourthly, I would mute the dissonant duplex and take a fourth set of readings. Tis would be an interesting project, don't you think? Duplexdan
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