Jim Busby wrote: > I'll go throw rocks at the article now; I think the short > backscale thing is ludicrous because of my actual > experience with it, so if that leads me to wonder if > anything in it is worth studying. > > Thanks. Jim There just doesn't seem to be much in it at all, once you fan the smoke away. He says there are sufficient acoustical arguments against the excessive length of dead ends, but doesn't mention what any of them might be, where my experience is long back scales are acoustically beneficial to soundboard movement. No argument, to my ear. Then he argues for longer dead ends to provide an elongation buffer, throwing in lots of numbers that aren't seemingly illustrative of what he's saying. At least I lost him at the third switchback. I do think it's an interesting concept to have long front and back scales on lower break% strings to somewhat counteract the tuning instability, but I doubt it is of any real practical value. Better to just draw up a decent scale in the first place, that doesn't need tricks to work. Of greater interest to me is the practice of individual ties on all strings, staggering the hitches to correspond with the pattern at the tuning pins, so all string lengths in each unison are the same length. That looks to me to have more potential for enhancing tuning stability, assuming the break% is already under control. But then, I'm more convinced every year, that laminated bridge caps, or bridge agraffes, will make a huge difference too. My take, Ron N
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC