Speaking Length of Strings

[Terry Miller]

I'm working on a small Baldwin grand and suspect that
it will need all the help it can get to optimize it's
sound.

I'm at the point of looking at the long bridge and
would like to be able to reassure myself that the
speaking lengths associated with it's shape are at
least not compromizing the sound.

It occurred to me to try and reproduce a scale
developed by someone else. Since I happen to have
Wolfenden's book I started with him.

If I understand correctly, he espouses use of an equal
tension scale, and builds his scale from one
statement: "...it is required that in each descending
octave each note shall contain twice the mass of the
corresponding note in the octave above." (p. 23)

It's easy enough to verify the math in his Table III
scale (pp. 28-28) but I don't understand his column 5
("Square Root of Area of Section of Wire").

Yes, I know I could go to PScale and force everything
to work, but building a spreadsheet helps me
understand things.


So my questions:

?how is column 5 calculated?

?is his 'mass' (in 1916) the same as our mass?

?are there better 'rules' for building a scale from
the ground up (spreadsheet)? Who suggested them?
where?

thanks

Terry Miller, RPT
Napa, CA

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