"we don't hear the inharmonicity in pianos. ... too much emphasis is still being put on absolute inharmonicity values in scaling." So Ron, this meants then, that you would favor a scale with no inharmonicity, right? (I KNOW that I'm being bad, but I can't help myself...) 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 5:27 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Steinway A Bass String Rescaling William Truitt wrote: > 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 :-) ). My point was, and is, that we don't hear the inharmonicity in the pianos. We hear tension, Z, and partials mix our choice of core wire, tension, and break% gives. Inharmonicity comes in when you're trying to tune across a transition with a big mismatch. >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 Yes, we do know a lot more, except that too much emphasis is still being put on absolute inharmonicity values in scaling. Ron N
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