Speaking Length of Strings

[Richard Moody]

I have read Wolfden and the American Steel and Wire Piano Conferences
(which is no longer  available from the supply houses) where the
representative from AS&W also proposed equal tension scale.  He made
more sense.  

I did restring a small grand to equal tension in the plain wire section.
If I did it again I would use a "graduated equal tension" scale. Would
be something on the lines of equal proportional increase in tension
based on elasticity limit and experimenting to find "optimum vibration
efficiency".  (Would that be a coefficient? ; )   BTW I computed the
tensions on an Atari 800 using a program in Basic I had to write.
Spread sheets sure are easier!! 

As to specific questions regarding Wolfden, I would be glad to discuss
as soon as I can find out where he is hiding under.   

---ric   (ric@pnotec.com)

		"Imagination is more important than knowledge." 
      Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Swiss-German-US physicist. 
 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org 
> [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of Terry Miller
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 11:07 AM
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Cc: Tremaine Parsons; Gary Hermsmeier; Peter Clark; 
> pianotuner@aol.com; claviers@onemain.com
> Subject: Speaking Length of Strings
> 
> 
>> 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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