longitude wave voicing

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Chris.

My understanding is that there is no straightforward way of voicing 
longitudinal wave components to the overall sound a string yeilds. Most 
noticeable in the lower regions of the piano, in bass strings you can to 
some degree decide their frequencies as part of your scale design, but 
the note you cite should be well out of the range where longitudinals 
should be in the picture.

My guess is that you are dealing with some kind of falseness. I'd 
suggest as a first attempt to change the offending strings and in the 
process dress up the front and bridge terminations. On the bridge if you 
find deep string grooves in the bridge then you may consider pulling the 
bridge pins, shaving down as deep as the grooves and then epoxy on a 
piece of appropriately thick veneer  and re-pin.  You might soak the 
bridge pin holes with CA glue as well while the pins are out. I find 
soaking the holes with pins out to have a superior affect then simply 
soaking as much in as you can with the pin in.  Not quantified yet... 
but my prejudiced reactions are positive enough to wish I had the 
resources to do an appropriate comparative study.  I have this suspicion 
that CA soaked as much into the wood as possible causes the bridge wood 
itself to respond more acoustically massy then the same wood without CA 
and that this is far closer to the real root of diverse kinds of bridge 
related falseness.

Cheers
Richard Brekne



    Hello List,

    Just renewed the list last month and been reading... I'm
    considering  a voicing issue in the octave above middle C that
    sounds like harmonic longitude wave coupling.  It is a shimmery
    sound about 4 octaves above the fundamental and it "appears" shortly
    after attack  and decays along with the rest of the sound.  I can
    barely hear it  but it is driving the owner nuts (very sensitive and
    somewhat  obsessive......).  The hammers are ready for shaping but
    the trial  hammer that I changed didn't seem to change the problem
    sound.  A bit  of voicing seemed to reveal the problem even a bit more.

    Does this sound to anyone like a problem consistent with a 
    longitudinal wave scaling/voicing issue?  Any other ideas?

    Thanks in advance,
    Chris Glattly RPT
    cglattly at rochester.rr.com