Re: [Harp-L] Stainless steel reeds - do they sound different? Some data

["Vern Smith" <jevern@xxxxxxx>]

I applaud the person who made and published the spectrograms and to Winslow 
for bringing them to our attention.  This sort of thing will contribute to 
our understanding of reed function.

Especially, I applaud Seydel for making harps with SS reeds.

That said, here are some cautions on drawing conclusions from the two 
spectrograms.

I found that the spectral differences of supposedly-identical but different 
reedplates on the same comb material were surprisingly great.  I believe 
that differences in the gaps and the clearances between the reeds and slots 
can show up in the spectrograms. That means that you can't attribute all of 
the differences in the spectrograms to differences in materials.

It would be interesting to see several spectrograms of  sets harps with 
brass and SS reeds.  That would let us assess how much of the difference was 
attributable to the difference in reed materials and designs and how much to 
other variables.

The other thing that would be interesting to know is how much the stiffness 
profile (the resistance to bending at each point along the length of the 
reed), and the mass at the tip varied from brass to SS. If this was not 
carefully controlled, the spectral differences may arise from differences of 
reed design and not from differences in material.

The spectral differences may have arisen from differences of materials, 
differences in reed design., or in differences of installation such as gap 
and clearance.  It would require more data to sort that out.

Vern
Visit my harmonica website www.Hands-Free-Chromatic.7p.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:21 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] Stainless steel reeds - do they sound different? Some data


> Bertram Becher of Seydel sent me an interesting link:
>
> http://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Seydel.sf/en_GB/?ObjectID=211764
>
> He recorded two otherwise identical harps, one with stainless reeds and
> one with brass reeds, then ran a frequency analysis on each. There are
> differences that are both audible on the recordings and visible in the
> frequency graph.
>
> Winslow
>
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