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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