Trying to understand my new piano's front/rear duplexes. It's a feature I haven't seen before: extra unmuted segments past capo and bridge, tuned to harmonics, vibrating sympathetically.
Why change the harmonics at those spots? (G5 not A5) Why misaligned at F#5/G5 (but not F#6)?
Conversation
A rare instance where Twitter failed to answer the question!
I have a theory for G5 vs A5: G5 in equal temperament tuning has almost no error vs. just temperament. Can't explain the misalignments, though.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_aco
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Interesting question. Off the top of my head I would say it all depends on the harmonic series emanating from the lowest bass note on the piano. They probably know those will be the strongest overtones to try to adjust (if I'm understanding the purpose right).
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Complicating things: the lowest bass notes have the most inharmonicity! So their series have the most error relative to the true harmonic series. I don't know if it's possible to compensate for that effectively in the duplex tuning.
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I don't know what duplex tuning is so I probably already spoke out of turn, but it's one takeaway from orchestration class when I was a Music major. Those overtones (especially from the bass) are pretty darned powerful!
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Replying to
Ah, in an orchestra the overtones wouldn't have this problem! In pianos the bass inharmonicity comes from increasing the string mass to make the strings a manageable length. Harmonics get distorted when wavelength approaches string thickness
