Wow, that picture is exciting! What a machine. I'd love to have heard one fresh out of the shop back when it was made.
Well, the string arrangement certainly does make for striking visual effect, but with the kind of tension that this many strings were giving the harp, it's more likely that the strings were arranged that way to keep the tension as even as possible. Piano strings are crossed similarly for the same reason; otherwise, you get tons of pressure on one side, giving the harp and the soundboard a chance to warp over time. The 'harp' I'm referring to is the heavy brass frame inside a piano that contains the stationary holding pegs for the non-tunable end of the strings, which is mounted to the soundboard, the large wooden piece (pieces, actually) that give off the sound received from the strings' vibrations. If you rap your knucles lightly against the side of a piano, you'll hear what you'd normally hear when knocking on a heavy door or a piece of furniture. If you reach inside and knock on the soundboard, it will be almost startlingly loud in comparison. The equivalents to these two pieces on the Klingsor would be, obviously, the brass frame the strings are mounted to, and the wood behind it that this frame is mounted to. Looking at the picture of the inside, behind the horn, the bracing of the soundboard doesn't seem to be of the kind of configuration that would allow the soundboard the freedom to make a great deal of sound, which may very well be intentional -- might've been too much sound from the strings without the bracing to mute the board somewhat. I'm betting that knocking on that wood just outside the horn opening from the front gives a louder, fuller sound than knocking on the side of the cabinet, though. Nonetheless, it appears that all the elements for a practical string-reverb are indeed in place! OK, OK, so how should they be tuned already? Well, you've got 36 strings there. By what I'll bet is no coincidence, that's exactly three chromatic octaves, so the apparatus will indeed serve its function with any record played. (Before I saw the picture, I thought there might be only 5 or 6 strings.) To know where they should be tuned, indeed, where they're capable of being tuned without slipping or breaking from too much tension, pluck each treble string one at a time and figure out which is the highest note, and what note of an A=440-tuned instrument it's closest to. Then do the same with the bass strings. I'm thinking they won't be 3 full octaves apart, and after this many years, they may not be able to be tuned with that kind of range. In fact, considering the gauges of the strings don't vary wildly, and neither do the vibrating lengths, there's a good chance that only 1 1/2 octaves were intended to be used, with the strings tuned in pairs over that range. This makes sense when you consider there weren't 3 octaves' worth of strong fundamental frequencies from normal acoustic playback to begin with. (Did the Victor Orthophonic get much closer to reproducing 3 full octaves of fundamental tones? Very probably.) The slight detuning inherent in tuning by pairs would make the strings' sound stand out even more richly. So, whether the inventors meant this to be the tuning or not, I'm thinking that with a new machine that would allow any tuning desired, the nicest sound would come from tuning the longest bass string to F natural, five white keys down from a piano's 'middle C', and going up chromatically by half steps. Judging from the relative string lengths apparent in the picture, I'd tune the two inside bass strings to that F first. Next, tune the bass strings one position out to F#. The next bass strings would be tuned to G, and the outermost pair of bass strings to A-flat. Then go back to the center and tune the innermost treble strings to A=440. The next pair out should be B-flat, then B, then middle C, etc. etc... Chances are good that the original tuning was a few keys higher, but I'm doubting the tuning pegs will be able to hold their original tension, not to mention the rust on the strings might make that dangerous. Some words about safety, while we're on the subject... Tune VERY slowly! In fact, if the strings want to stay in an even smaller range than 1 1/2 octaves, you may need to let them. You could tune each string to its nearest relative-A=440 counterpart and get a lovely sound without being in danger of popping a string and taking an eye out. Also, expect them to slip back into their out-of-tune position for a long while -- the longer a peg stays in one position, the more of a memory develops and the more that peg will tend to slip back (due to the string as much as the peg and soundboard). Tuning a stubborn string up or down a half step or two may help, and the most important thing is that the strings are tuned relative to A=440, a good bit more important than getting the original tuning right. Either way, it's almost a guarantee you'll need to retune over and over and over for years to come, less and less frequently in the future as the pegs slowly become accustomed to their new positions. I'm sure there are lots of informative pages on the web about tuning old pianos, player pianos, and the like, that can address the safety issues and all that much more completely. Any decent chromatic tuner with a condenser mic built in should be perfect for helping tune to A=440. You can find one at any music store for $20-$80 and cheaper on eBay. (Make sure it's chromatic! Some cheap tuners only tuned to E-A-D-G-B-E, standard guitar tuning.) Sorry for writing a book here, but I certainly think this machine will sound magnificent and distinctive with the strings intact and in tune, and it's worth the effort if I can help in any way. Best, Robert ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 9:07 AM Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Klingsor > > In a message dated 9/13/2005 2:47:07 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, > [email protected] writes: > > Any chance you might post a picture of the part with the strings? I could > tell you more if I had more info. It sounds so far like the inventors might > not have had specific tunings in mind, even. Maybe the patent might know? > > > > Hi Robert, > The shortest string length is 5 1/2 inches and the longest is 6 inches. > There are only two different calibers of string. One is about .03 and the other > is a larger wound string (but nowhere as thick as the wound bass strings on > a piano. The wound strings are spaced evenly among the thinner > strings--obviously more for it's visual effect than for musical needs. > You can see a picture of the machine with strings on eBay # 6553563345. > Thanks for the info. > > --Art > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > [email protected] > > Phono-L Archive > http://www.oldcrank.org/pipermail/phono-l/ >
