•Jody/Robbie, In MMD 971220 Peter Coggins asked about how to configure 36 zither strings into a 30-string Autoharp. I have replied privately to Peter. I don't know whether autoharps really qualify as mechanical music, so I'll leave it up to you as to whether you want to edit this for the Digest or n...

•There has been much discussion recently about whether piano hammers can accelerate after they have been released to fly freely at the string. First the definition of acceleration. Acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity. Both velocity and acceleration are vector quantities; this m...

•Bernt Damm wrote: > Some other point to note here is that the energy transmitted from > the hammer to the string is constant, flex or no flex of shank, > because the moving mass does not change. I therefore say that it > will not influence the volume of sound at all if the shank bends > a little or...

•Bernt Damm wrote: > Some other point to note here is that the energy transmitted from > the hammer to the string is constant, flex or no flex of shank, > because the moving mass does not change. I therefore say that it > will not influence the volume of sound at all if the shank bends > a little or...

•Hello MMD readers, In recent issues I've seen a string of postings about making-up a list of Duo-Art owners. One consideration here is that the Duo-Art (over all other types of so-called 'reproducing' pianos) is "Alive and Active", _just like_ the 88-Note pedal player. In other words, _new_ instrum...

•Hi all, Just to add to the "brazing is as good or better than" string, I had a differential repaired on my then brand new 1982 3/4 ton Chevy truck by a Chevy dealer in Illinois, because it had a crack in the differential casing. They brazed it. When I traded it in (with 185,000 mi.), in October of ...

•Interesting. The patent goes on at length about a system that senses the frequency of individual strings and transmits the information via infrared LEDs: "This determined value is transmitted via infrared LEDs (light emitting diodes) 7 (see FIGS. 1(a) and 1(b)) similar to a television remote contro...

•My favourite eBay (mis-)description of recent times has just completed: item 7341709783, titled "String Assembly for pianola". This turned out to be simply the strung back of a piano, no case or action, photographed in splendid isolation and looking rather surreal. It was described: "Upright string...

•Interesting. So it seems what he is doing is using the "string blade" to vibrates just one string for the full range of the violin. The other two strings (this violin only has three strings) are selectively played by the bow to add to the sound of the violin. The pitch of these two strings is contr...

•Dear Folks, I'm seeking these Duo-Art Rolls: 6717-4 Andante Cantabile string quartet #1, H. Bauer 6373 Largo, H. Bauer 67589 H.M.S. Pinafore, R. Armbruster Any Help? Thanks! Claude Williams claude411@verizon.net.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]

•I was once told that to get the 'honky-tonk piano' effect you first tune the piano correctly and then slightly detune one string of each unison. I have never tried this and never will. Nicholas Simons, England

•Nothing magical about it. It's what you might call a "piano celeste." Temperament strings are all tuned to concert pitch, but one unison string is tuned slightly flat, just enough to produce a slight beat. You can also tune the other unison string slightly sharp but that might be a bit over the top...

Dear Musiclovers, A friend of mine has constructed a sixty (60) strings "CHORDEPHON" type music-player. However the tuning of this instrument is not known to him. Has one of you experience with te "chordephon", the name of this instrument in the past. Yours sincerely, Gerard Arkenbout ...

Remember: a Hurdy-Gurdy is not a barrel organ or a street organ. It's a stringed instrument played with a rosined wheel and keys. Philip Jamison

> could not get it up to the absolutely correct pitch for fear he would > break a lot of strings. (They are the strings that were in there in 1957 > when my mother bought it.) He said that it was about "20 cents off" Hi John, Get another tuner. 20cents off is less than 1/4 tone flat. This guy is jus...

•Hi All, Larry Mayo asked about why tri-chord dampers aren't used throughout the steel-stringed portions of a piano. I'm not an engineer, but my feeling is that tri-chord dampers simply aren't necessary for the majority of the tenor and treble portions of the scale. In large uprights, tri-chord damp...

•About the only way to break a good piano plate is to shock it hard enough to bend it while the strings are still on it. They are otherwise almost impossible to bust. But defective piano plates are another story. I had a plate break one time, right across the widest portion of the lower treble web. ...

•Hi Rae Walzer: Tuning a player is frustrating to some tuners because the upper player stack makes it difficult to mute the strings for tuning. In the tuning process a tube might have been disconnected to the roll drive. Your description is to vague to know for certain. I would offer to speak by pho...

•Another important measurement that should be considered is the distance between the hammers at rest on the rail and the strings, also called the hammer blow distance. As I recall, the recommended distance for the modern full-sized model K52 Steinway upright is 1.75 inches. I don't know what Steinwa...

•I restored a Seeburg L in 2009 and my piano technician, who was re-stringing it, wanted to tune it to A=440, so I posed the question to Art Reblitz. He confirmed that virtually all orchestrions, apart from Nelson-Wiggen, stuck with A=435 till they ceased production in 1929. So your xylophone is rig...