In a message dated 9/13/2005 3:00:54 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
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... Wow Robert! I'm very impressed, and I'm copying this stuff for later use. I'm right at the beginning of restoration of this machine and so am not quite ready to tune the thing. This information will come in handy when I do tune it, however. I have the full original patent, courtesy of Loran and it says nothing about the tuning necessary. It does, however, include a lot of bull about the enrichment of sound by the string vibration and soundboard. There is even a soundpost described between the horn and soundboard (which my unit doesn't have). I do appreciate all your help...Art
