[pianotech] Steinway A Bass String Rescaling

[William Truitt]

I don't think that an "acceptable" range of inharmonicity can ever be
determined objectively, nor is that necessary or even desirable.  That's a
bit like asking "What's the best color red?"  You are asking people for a
judgment (perhaps based on certain criteria, but also shaped by
preferences).  Why would an absolute standard be a good thing?  I think it
is great that we have many different pianos based on different inharmonicity
curves as well as other criteria.  That being said, many of us would agree
that certain pianos sound better than others, and this can be correlated to
the amount of inharmonicity and the smoothness of the curve (amongst a
multitude of other things that we cannot separate from inharmonicity, as Ron
points out in his curmudgeonly fashion :-) ).  We do understand a hell of a
lot more about inharmonicity and the other factors involved in string
scaling than we did 50 years ago, and that is being put to use in scaling
and rescaling pianos today.  Do we know everything there is to know?  Not
likely.  

Will

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Ron Nossaman
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 10:20 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Steinway A Bass String Rescaling

JUDE REVELY wrote:
> 
> I've always taken the numbers to relate to tuning as a function of 
> stiffness. The fact that they are not literal representations of our 
> ideal tuning curves is only an indication that our understanding of the 
> problem has a long way yet to evolve. 

Oh, right, it's a mystery. Since when has an inharmonicity 
formula ever been intended to be a literal representation of 
an ideal tuning curve?


>The formulae may be incomplete or 
> perhaps just a foggy picture; but even Einstein's Theory of Relatively 
> has holes (at least according to many current string theorists, not 
> having crunched the numbers myself ;).

More misdirection.


> The other remaining question is, can an acceptable range of 
> inharmonicity ever be determined objectively?

Not by minimally cleaning up existing scales, that is certain. 
And one more time, how do you separate inharmonicity from the 
other scaling parameters to find out?
Ron N