Re: [Harp-L] XB-40 Tone

[Pat Missin <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

jazmaan wrote:

>I had several people ask me whether Pat Missin had done 
>anything else to my harp besides retune it, because they thought 
>it had a better tone than they'd previously heard on the XB. 

Yes - I filled the hollow parts of the comb with sawdust to help give
it that warm woody tone. 

Just kidding. I simply retuned it and adjusted the reeds
appropriately.

>I suspect that perception was probably influenced by the sweet 
>sounding chords that the XB-Melody can produce. 

Unless you only ever play single notes all the time, the
tuning/temperament used is one of the greatest factors in how the harp
is perceived tonally.

>Pat did tell me that it takes very little tweaking to bring an XB-Melody 
>into Just Intonation. 

Unlike the standard major tuning, the Melody MakerTM tuning can be
tuned in 5-limit JI. Long story short, this means that you can have
completely pure chords everywhere on the harp without having any great
deviations from Equal Temperament, such as you have with the notorious
5 draw and 9 draw notes on the standard major tuning. For more
details:

http://www.patmissin.com/tunings/tun4.html

>I suspect that the stock XB-40 may use Equal Temperment and 
>that may add a bit of edginess to its "tone".

The XB-40s that I have worked on were all tuned in a compromise
temperament much like that used on the Special 20.

>Also, if I recall correctly, Pat thought the bending "floor" on the
>stock XB-40 was a bit too high. So he may have lowered the 
>XB-Melody's bending floor to give it a little bit of a cushion or 
>"dip" under each bent note. Maybe Pat will jump into this thread 
>and confirm this.

It was the other way around - I actually raised the floor a little.
The way the stock XB-40s are set up, it is very easy to overshoot the
lowest bends, so I raised the lowest possible bends by a few cents.
However, I think it's probably a good idea to be careful not to raise
the floor too high, as you then run the risk of straining the
auxiliary reeds by constantly bending notes to their limit. Some
cushion is essential, but I felt that the stock tuning had just too a
little much.

>But I still think at least 80% of tone comes from the player and 
>the XB is no exception to that rule.

I think 80% is probably a conservative estimate.

 -- Pat.