At 1:29 AM -0500 11/17/02, Duplexdan@aol.com wrote:
>List,
>
>Unless i've missed something the only test of the before and after tuning of
>the duplex scale was in my article in the Journal in May of '95. At that time
>there was a measure of he--hawing about my results.
That can be found in the 8/95 Journal, p.8. Steve Brady gathered
letters to the editor in reaction to your article by John Hartman,
Keith McGavern, Dave Porritt and myself. Your response to these (in
an opportunity offered by Steve) was not much more than "Technical
support is on the way.") I waited for that tech support (assuming
that what you were promising was a technical report which would
support your idea), but unless I missed it, it never appeared in the
Journal.
Yes, it has been 7 years.
>It's been 7 years. I
>think it's about time that some of these wagon masters of duplex scale
>opinionata either proved CFT Steinway and I were a pair of mules or got off
>their duplexophobic butts and tried to tune a duplex scale themselves.
No one is arguing that CFTS wasn't responsible for the major
evolutionary leap taken by the Steinway during the last 1/3 of the
19th century, and copied by nearly all other piano manufacturers.
There has been plenty of suggestion on this list that Steinway had
far from an an unblemished winning streak in its patents. (Search the
archives for the string, "sacred cows make great hamburger".)
What has yet to be laid out is the physical basis for your anecdotal
reports. At this point, I'll have to rely on Stephen Birkett's
reading of Patent, because the uspto's Quicktime images show up at
400%, revealing only a corner of the page (and I have a mac...).
At 12:56 AM -0500 11/17/02, Stephen Birkett wrote:
>REAR the only function of the rear duplex is to eliminate
>non-harmonic whistling by
>tuning a longitudinal mode. In this patent, then, both duplices were
>intended by CFT to be tuned.
It would appear from this that what tuning the rear duplexes
accomplish would be to take rear duplex string segments whose
contribution to the overtone is significant, and to make sure that
that contribution is in tune. It says nothing about the fact that a
"harmonic relationship" between the lengths of the "main speaking
length" and the rear duplex segment will actually produce more
overall sound than a non-harmonic relationship could.
Stephen himself chose not to read too much into this.
At 12:56 AM -0500 11/17/02, Stephen Birkett wrote:
>To paraphrase his reasoning, this will bring the longitudinal
>whistling noises into
>better harmony with the string fundamental. [not passing comment on
>the validity
>of his argument here - that is a different story - only your dog
>will be able to tell for much of the scale
At 1:29 AM -0500 11/17/02, Duplexdan@aol.com wrote:
>It may mean swallowing some pride, but nobody is interested in
>recrimination; all
>any serious piano technician is interested in is "a singing tone".
Swallowing some pride is a very small price to pay for the ability to
produce "a singing tone" in pianos, on a repeated basis, one after
another, without fail. But I haven't found a consistent relationship
between great sounding pianos, and an exact tuning between the main
and rear duplex segments of the strings. (Case in point: On Fri, I
stopped at the local Steinway dealer north of here and tried a great
sounding M the mid treble rear duplex bar started off with a
"near"-ninth and ended up with a "near"-augmented fourth.)
At 8:59 PM -0500 11/15/02, Bill Ballard wrote:
>I'd love to hear it happen, but so far I haven't. (And I've
>certainly heard other people
>say they've heard it.)
To be continued,
Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.
".......true more in general than specifically"
...........Lenny Bruce, spoofing a radio discussion of the Hebrew
roots of Calypso music
+++++++++++++++++++++
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